Sustainability and Environmental Security

An interactive lesson on the link between peace and environmental security: conflicts over oil, gas and water, and sustainability as a cultural as well as an economic question. Students mapped the natural resources of their own countries and calculated their ecological footprint together, looking at diet, housing, energy, waste and transport. Barcelona’s conversion of car lanes into pedestrian space served as a case of urban policy.

Key message: personal behaviour weighs on environmental security as much as government choices.

The Dilemmas of Peace

Peace is one of the most used words in politics and one of the least defined, because it is always thought of in relation to war. The lesson followed the idea of peace from ancient Greece and Augustine’s «tranquillity of order» to Erasmus, Hobbes, Spinoza, Kant’s Perpetual Peace and David Hume’s writings on war, justice and the balance of power. It contrasted pacifism with the arguments of those who saw war as a driving force of history.

Key message: politics comes from polis, not polemos; it exists to govern diversity, and good politics is the road to positive peace.

Building Trust in Public Life: Information Integrity and Cognitive Security

Starting from the students’ own experience with news, the lesson showed how information, even when true but badly received, affects health, work and public trust. It distinguished misinformation, disinformation and malinformation, and presented Egypt’s response during Covid-19 as an «ecosystem» of rules, media monitoring, official channels and awareness campaigns.

Key message: prebunking, before false content spreads, works better than debunking alone; verify the source and look for a second one.

Principles of Project Management

An introduction to Project Cycle Management, the method recommended by the European Commission for social projects: programming, identification, formulation, financing, implementation and evaluation. Students worked with the logical framework: problem tree, objective tree, strategy analysis, activities, results, critical path and Gantt chart.

Key message: write the project first, then the application form; a good project is relevant, feasible and lasting.

Introduction to Peace Project Design

A problem is the gap between the current and the desired situation, and it becomes credible only with measurable indicators. Every Local Peace Project must answer one question first: who needs it, and do they really need it? Projects are linked to sustainable development, meeting present needs without compromising those of future generations.

Multipolarity and Indo-Pacific Strategies

The Indo-Pacific read as an economic and geographic space of routes, ports, value chains and markets, not only as a military arena. The lesson distinguished the distribution of power from the rules of order, discussed maritime chokepoints and the shift from «just in time» to «just in case» supply chains, and compared the strategies of the United States, China, India, Japan, ASEAN and the European Union.

Key message: de-risking (reducing dangerous dependencies) is not decoupling; every strategy has winners and losers inside each country.

Local Peace Projects: needs, stakeholders and sustainable development

Every project exists to meet a human need; value is the capacity to meet a recognised need. The lesson covered stakeholder analysis, the triple bottom line and the 2030 Agenda, with a live exercise on the UN SDG indicators database: each Local Peace Project must declare the need, its SDG and the indicator that will measure change.

Human Values, Ethics and Dialogue

Students drafted the principles of an AI Charter: artificial intelligence should be used but governed, with rules and safeguards; empathy, dignity, equity and responsibility as guiding values; transparency about the use of AI and limits to dependence.

Key message: values are who we are, ethics is how we use them every day.

Local Peace Project: from model to practice

A worked example, the clean-up of a polluted riverbank, followed every phase of the project cycle with SDG indicators, stakeholders, financing and evaluation. The lesson then discussed organisation and dialogue (Chandler, Habermas, Coase) and the quality of relations among stakeholders.

Artificial Intelligence and Human Responsibility

AI is science and technology, not magic. The lesson explained symbolic and neural approaches, how large language models predict the next token, and their limits: plausibility is not truth, hallucinations, bias learned from data, deepfakes and automation bias. It presented the European AI Act and its risk-based approach.

Key message: peace requires dialogue, dialogue requires trust, and trust requires reliable technology and responsible human choices.

Social Accountability: from Principles to Practice

Good governance rests on transparency, participation, accountability and the rule of law. Social accountability sits on the citizens’ side and complements institutions. Tools discussed: participatory budgeting (Porto Alegre), citizen report cards, public expenditure tracking and community scorecards. The lesson closed with a simulated public assembly in Belvedere Marittimo on a school budget.

Peace Leadership Skills

The Local Peace Project as the heart of the SPU: a great vision, and knowing where to take the first step, «piano piano». Leadership in critical situations means taking distance from the problem, keeping calm, imagining how it will look in three years and listening to the team. The Peace Lab aquifer scenario was used as a metaphor of deterrence, where nobody wins alone.

Art as a Universal Language

Images cross linguistic borders, but art history never gave peace a single form: from Cephisodotus’ Eirene and the Ara Pacis to Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good Government and David’s Intervention of the Sabine Women, peace appears as prosperity, victory, justice and action.

Key message: peace as concordia discors, a common space strong enough to hold what still divides us.

From Roots to Growth

Calabria as a hinge between Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, with tourism, agriculture and crafts as resources. Against standardised innovation: technology centred on people, sustainability and local identity, with examples of start-ups and craft enterprises supported by the University of Calabria.

International Trade: Market Diversification and South-South Cooperation

International cooperation as broader than trade: North-North, South-South and triangular cooperation. The lesson discussed maritime chokepoints, the shock of February 2022 on supply chains, reshoring and friendshoring, regional agreements such as AfCFTA, and free tools of international organisations for market intelligence.