Education - dr. FM (Michiel) Köhne

In teaching anthropology of law I pursue first and foremost to achieve a discussion between my students, the teaching materials and me. My teaching supports students to think aloud and try out their positioning in debates on development and on the role of law in development. In this way, I hope to support a learning experience that goes beyond a mere reproduction of knowledge, its application or analysis of cases by students, aiming at a genuine growth of the students themselves.

Being a student of international development for me is not primarily about learning the skills for a job or even understanding inequalities. Although these are important and useful and do take up their rightful prominent place in the curriculum. More importantly however, it is about learning to place yourself in this world full of questions of development and inequalities.

My happiest moments in teaching are those when students find out anew who they are or who they can be in relation to development. One of the courses in which this is very much the focus is our SDC50904 course on "Resistance, Power and Movements" which is all about developing your own political agency in the realm of activism.