On November 9, 2018 I had the distinct pleasure of returning to Jacobs University to present during a colloquium called “Bildung Beyond Boundaries, Part II: Beyond the Discipline. Academic Innovations and the Role of Inter and Trans Disciplinarity.” Duke has had a connection to Jacobs for number of years through the Visual Studies Initiative, and I have had the pleasure of serving on 3 PhD committees for students who were enrolled in the innovative VisComX PhD at Jacobs. My talk was called “How to Decompose Disciplines Best: Project Based Learning with Visualizing Cities.” I really liked the play on “decompose” – which in US English might have a slightly different association than it did for this international audience. As one does, I went back to the dictionary to think about decomposition in the form of a prism, which gave me an excellent opportunity to bring a rainbow into the conversation! I was also interviewed for a podcast about the subject. I really appreciate the international and committed community at Jacobs – a small place doing great things.
