Planetary WE Lab at the University Witten/Herdecke
What does it really mean to live, learn, and act responsibly in a world that feels increasingly complex, fragile, and interconnected?
This question quietly guided the creation of Planetary WE Lab, an innovative course born from both academic inquiry and a deep human longing for connection, meaning, and shared responsibility.
Our Planetary WE emerged from a simple but powerful research concern:
How can education support individuals and communities in developing the awareness, relational capacity, and courage needed to face today’s global challenges?
Rather than offering ready-made answers, the course invites students to explore how inner transformation and collective action belong together.
The course was created by an international group of facilitators, experienced researchers, educators, and practitioners, from Germany, Poland, India, the Netherlands, the United States, and New Zealand. Their fields range from psychology, trauma-informed practice, and systems thinking to indigenous studies, leadership development, and contemplative pedagogy. What unites this diverse team is not a single discipline, but a shared conviction: that the challenges of our time require new ways of being, not only new knowledge.
From the beginning, Planetary WE was designed as an embodied learning journey. Alongside academic frameworks such as Integral Theory and systems thinking, students engage in practices of presence, dialogue, and reflection. Indigenous wisdom traditions, somatic awareness, and creative expression play a central role, helping students experience interconnectedness not as an abstract concept, but as a lived reality.
The Fundamentals Module, which has just concluded as part of the Studium Fundamentale at the private university Witten/Herdecke, offered students a grounding in presence, attunement, cultural awareness, and planetary responsibility.
The feedback has been deeply encouraging. Students speak of moments of clarity, realizing how their personal histories, cultural backgrounds, and emotional patterns shape the way they relate to others and to the world. Many describe a growing ability to pause, listen more deeply, and hold difference with curiosity rather than defensiveness.
What seems to resonate most is the course’s emphasis on relationship with oneself, with others, with ancestors, and with the living Earth. Students report that practices such as circle dialogue, meditation, and embodied reflection helped them feel more rooted and less overwhelmed by global crises. Instead of paralysis or cynicism, many experienced a renewed sense of agency: a feeling that meaningful action can emerge from awareness, care, and collaboration.
Planetary WE does not shy away from difficult topics such as trauma, injustice, and ecological loss. Yet it approaches them through a lens of healing, dignity, and shared humanity. By integrating inner work with systemic perspectives, the course helps students understand that sustainable change grows from both personal insight and collective responsibility.
Looking ahead,IfGIC is already working toward the next chapter. Plans are underway to develop an expanded curriculum in European cooperation, strengthening academic collaboration while preserving the course’s experiential and intercultural core. The vision is to create a learning space where students across borders can grow into thoughtful, grounded, and compassionate leaders for a world in transition.
Planetary WE is, at its heart, an invitation, to slow down, to listen, and to remember that we are not separate. In learning to say “we” again, students are discovering new ways to meet the future with clarity, resilience, and care.
If you or your institution are interested in working with us on the further development of this course as part of a partnership in the Erasmus program, please write to us.
Dr. Anna Storck
