PhD in Social Change and Sustainability

Intercultural Open University Foundation (IOUF) aspires to create an academic environment grounded in interdisciplinary intellectual discovery and guided by rational discourse. Within its learning community, IOUF endeavours to act according to its basic values of respect for one another, cooperation, creative imagination, pride in a job well done, and intellectual and spiritual growth.

Learners in the Graduate Studies Program may concentrate on a variety of areas in social sciences and humanities consistent with the expertise of their PhD Committees which includes: the Core Faculty Advisor, the Second Core Reader, an External Scholar, two peers, and, if appropriate, one or more consultants.

The Intercultural Open University Foundation is one of a small number of alternative educational institutions which began In the 1960s when the learner-centred, self-directed orientation of education movement emerged in the US and UK. Roy P. Fairfield, a Harvard University Professor of Education, was among the founders of this movement. His book, person-centred Graduate Education(1977) chronicles his pioneering efforts at the Union Graduate School to create a self-directed graduate program and explores the paths and pitfalls of alternative modes of education. Much of the non-traditional educational philosophy in the 1960s incorporated the ideas of humanistic psychology, such as those of Carl Rogers’ Client-Centered Therapy, Arnold Mindell’s Process- Oriented Psychology and Clark Moustakis’ Transpersonal Psychology.