AIM OF THE PRIZE
Teaching in the broad field of planning is one of the main activities of AESOP Member Schools. Thus, in 2002, AESOP introduced a prize, which recognizes and encourages Excellence in Teaching. Through this award, AESOP celebrates and disseminates innovative practices in teaching in its Member Schools. The broad aim of the Prize is to stimulate the development of planning courses or groups of courses in order to better prepare students for their forthcoming practice, to further educate practitioners, and to promote the development of a critical perspective. The specific purpose of the prize is to promote and encourage planning schools to innovate in ways that enhance the knowledge and skills necessary to respond to new global planning challenges. The Award provides an important opportunity to disseminate effective practice and importantly to celebrate teaching quality amongst European Schools of Planning.
THE THEME OF THE PRIZE IN 2019
Planners as Leaders of Urban Transition
Recently there has been much debate in the planning discipline and withing the AESOP community surrounding notions of interdisciplinarity in the development of cities and regions. This was a theme explored by the AESOP Young Academics network roundtable on planning education held at the AESOP Congress in Gothenburg in 2018. More recently it was also the overarching theme of the AESOP Heads of School meeting held in Ljubljana in March 2019 which explored ‘Interdisciplinarity in Planning Education. Such exchanges raised a number of issues, notably the recognition that, apart from planning, many other disciplines play an important part in the development of cities and regions. This directs attention to questions such as whether or not planning plays a special role within this group of disciplines, if planning should take a leadership role, and if so what may give planning its legitimacy to do so?
In light of this the theme selected for this year’s AESOP Prize for Excellence in Teaching is ‘Planners as leaders of Urban Transition’. The Prize Committee are keen to encourage entries from modules that employ innovative approaches to address the needs of education and development of skills of planners as the leaders of urban transition in different roles and modes of planning, cultural, social, economic and geographical environments facing different challenges and problems. The Committee will adopt a broad view of leadership as a concept, which can be explored through different teaching formats.
ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA
Only AESOP member schools can be nominated for this prize. The course must have been successfully implemented for at least one year. Applicants can either be:
- a planning school;
- a planning department within a university; or
- a group of teaching staff or an individual belonging to an AESOP Member school.
HOW TO APPLY
Please, use the electronic application form available from the AESOP web site.
All material must be submitted electronically.
Applications must be received by 24 of June 2019.
Applications must include a full description of the course or module, as it is described and structured in the 2019 application form.
THE JURY
A panel of academics (AESOP Excellence in Teaching Award Committee) will judge the nominees. The panel will consist of AESOP members, including a representative from AESOP’s Young Academics Network.
AWARDING THE PRIZE
A prize of €1000 will be presented to a representative of the winning programme during the AESOP Congress in Venice, in July 2019, at the AESOP General Assembly which will take place.
