Teaching at IIHS (Institution Deemed to be) University began on 1 September 2025 with the start of the Monsoon Semester for Master’s and Doctoral students. The opening week combined foundational courses, core concepts, and methods, laying the groundwork for the academic year.
Master’s students began with Foundation Courses, ‘Grow, Cook, Eat’, which introduces the socio-cultural and ecological significance of food through growing and sharing meals, and ‘Play and Yoga’, which promotes fitness, wellness and collaboration through activities from yoga to team sports. In Core Courses, students started ‘Infrastructure Systems and Services’, which explored the vulnerabilities and inequalities of urban systems; ‘Public Institutions and Governance’, which examined the complexity of State and non-State actors; and ‘Ecology and Environment’, which considered urbanisation’s ecological impacts and the scope for biodiversity and climate action. Methods courses, ‘Ethnographic Methods’ and ‘Data Analytics’, began alongside ‘Language Lab’ sessions.
Doctoral scholars started ‘Interdisciplinary Approaches to Research and Practice I’, which traces the evolution of multi- and interdisciplinary thought and its applications in scholarship and practice, and ‘Advanced Writing’, positioning writing as central to scholarly practice.
Together, the first week of coursework marked the beginning of a shared academic journey into the interdisciplinary study and practice of urbanisation.
