Apply for the Mixed Classroom 2026-2027
Application deadline for students is closed
Course enrolment for practitioners is open up to and including 11 October 2026
Contact dr. Jeroen Oomen for more information: j.j.oomen@uu.nl
Starting November 2026, the Urban Futures Studio offers a mixed classroom course, a prize-winning form of academic education for ambitious UU master students where you learn from and with societal actors such as policymakers, activists, and artists. This year’s Mixed Classroom will evolve around the theme ‘Rehearsing Democracy: finding new forms of engagement’. Connecting with ongoing societal and political developments, the course uses futuring to address the idea of ‘captured futures’: our cultural inability to make meaningfully different political choices. Course enrolment for students is open, up to and including 20 October 2026.
In this 3-month course, you will explore both theoretically and in practice how Techniques of Futuring and dramaturgy shape our collective capacity to imagine and act towards sustainable futures. You will learn how the interaction of knowledge, setting and form influence if and how people change their perspectives on sustainability transitions, and together we will explore the crucial role of dramaturgy in making political change possible. Moreover, you will learn how ‘dramaturgical regimes’ determine what we can say with influence, how, and why – and how ‘soft spaces’ make other forms of decision-making possible.
The Mixed Classroom format
Our Mixed Classroom offers a mix of (guest) lectures, workshops, discussions, and collaborative assignments. You will learn to apply the acquired theoretical knowledge in real-life contexts concerning ‘just sustainability transitions’. Participants gain hands-on experience connecting ideas to action in collaboration with policymakers and practitioners on scientifically innovative and societally urgent topics. In addition, you will learn to use innovative and creative forms for doing and presenting research.
Get a sense of what to expect from Urban Futures Studio’s Mixed Classroom: have a look at last year's interactive exhibition 'Four Futures for 2054', the bus tour ‘A Coach for Conversation’, the Museum of the Linear Economy and the Canon of Change. Course creators of the Mixed Classroom, dr. Jesse Hoffman and dr. Peter Pelzer talk about this innovative, price-winning form of education in an interview with Dutch magazine Rooijlijn.
For UU Master’s students
- Course enrolment for this course is open up to and including 20 September 2026 23:59h
- Period: The course starts on 18 November 2026
- Course days: Wednesday & Friday
- Students can follow this course for both 5 EC and 7.5 EC
- A pre-selection applies to this course
- For more information, contact course coordinator Jeroen Oomen (j.j.oomen@uu.nl)
For practitioners
- Course enrolment for this course is open up to and including 11 October 2026
- Period: The course starts in week 47
- Course days: 20 November, 27 November, 11 December, 18 December, 8 January, 29 January.
- Course meet-ups start at 14:00 to 17:00 in Utrecht (with possible exceptions)
- Target audience: policymakers from ministries BZK,I&W, EZK, LVVN, and other practitioners interested in this year's theme.
- A pre-selection applies to this course: send a motivation letter to course coordinator Jeroen Oomen