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JULY 22, 2026 | Learn Edition #1
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It is exciting to see systemic design programmes taking root, developing, and maturing. This education-focused edition offers a touchpoint across a group of programmes that approach systemic design as praxis, deepening both research and practice.
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Please be in touch if you would like to share a systemic design programme with the wider community through the SDA newsletter: cheryl@systemic-design.org
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Designing Resilient Regenerative Systems
Partially funded fellowship: apply by July 31, 2026
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Systemic design education is developing through programmes that bring research, practice, and situated learning into closer relationship. The Designing Resilient Regenerative Systems programme at ETH Zurich is one such initiative, approaching systemic design as a post-discipline that draws together science, engineering, design, systems thinking-sensing, embodied practice, and inner processes.
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Beginning in autumn 2026, the Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS #3: CAS ETH) in Regenerative Systems: Systemic Design will be offered part-time over five months. The hybrid programme combines preparatory MOOCs, live online conversations with invited experts, methods practice, an individual Quest, and a one-week field design trip to Mallorca, Spain.
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To broaden participation in and contribution to the wider systemic design community, we are offering one Systemic Design Field-Building Quest Fellowship, funded through DRRS programme support. The fellowship covers 50% of the current tuition fee and supports a participant who wishes to connect their own learning with a practical contribution to the wider systemic design field. The associated Quest will be developed throughout the CAS and completed through the final deliverable, with an emphasis on sensing the field's diversity, making relationships visible, and cultivating conditions for deeper exchange.
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To apply, visit the ETH Zürich page below and contact us at drrs@ethz.ch with the subject line: DRRS-SDA CAS 3 Scholarship Application. Deadline: July 31, 2026.
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Program Director, ETH Zurich
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CAS ETH in Regenerative Systems: Systemic Design, Designing Resilient Regenerative Systems, ETH Zurich
Five-month, part-time Certificate of Advanced Studies approaching systemic design as a post-discipline across scientific, engineering, designerly, embodied and inner methods. Hybrid delivery combines preparatory online learning, live conversations, methods practice and an individual Quest with a mandatory one-week field design trip to Mallorca. Taught in English.
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Runs October 1, 2026–February 28, 2027
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Application deadline: July 31, 2026
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Executive Master of Systems Oriented Design, Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Three-year, part-time programme for experienced professionals applying systems thinking and design to complex organisational and societal challenges. Eight taught modules completed over two years are followed by a master’s thesis in the third year. Taught in English through intensive seminars at AHO in Oslo.
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Next cohort: February 2027
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Application deadline: November 15, 2026
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Master's Degree in Systemic Design, Politecnico di Torino
Two-year programme preparing designers to develop sustainable and inclusive products, processes, services, open industrial systems and models of social innovation. Teaching combines lectures, group work, interdisciplinary laboratories and engagement with industry and other institutions. Taught in Italian and English at the Mirafiori campus, with separate admissions routes for applicants holding Italian and non-Italian qualifications.
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Next international admissions cycle: dates to be announced; the most recent cycle opened in December.
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Strategic Foresight and Innovation (MDes), OCAD University
Graduate programme developing strategic foresight, design thinking and research methods for navigating complex problems, organisational change and sustainable futures. Offered full-time and in person over two years or part-time and online over three years. Systemic design teaching is extended across Strategic Foresight and Innovation, Design for Health and Inclusive Design through a forthcoming shared course, Systems Thinking and Systemic Design.
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Fall 2027 applications open in mid-October 2026.
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Alongside higher education, shorter professional courses offer practitioners opportunities to develop systemic capabilities while continuing to work. The Service Design College, the Systems School, New Know How, and the Designing Resilient Regenerative Systems MOOC Series take distinct but complementary approaches to learning through practice. Please be in touch if you have work to share. cheryl@systemic-design.org
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Service Design College
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Service Design College offers Systemic Design for Tackling Complexity, an eight-week online course focused on understanding complex organisational and societal contexts, engaging stakeholders, and designing interventions for systems change. The course book is Design Journeys through Complex Systems by Peter Jones and Kristel Van Ael.
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Beginning October 19, 2026, the course combines independent learning with live classes, mentoring, practical exercises, and the Systemic Design Toolkit. Tutors are: Peter Jones, Inge Keizer, Koen Peters, and Kristel Van Ael,
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The Systems School
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The Systems School offers online learning for practitioners seeking to think, work, and lead systemically. Its courses range from introductions to systems thinking, systemic change, power, facilitation, and systems methods to a ten-month Systems Leadership Program led by Seanna Davidson and Dana Shen. The programme combines systems thinking with reflective and embodied practice, peer learning, coaching, collective sensemaking, and multiple knowledge and wisdom traditions.
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Expressions of interest are open for the 2027 Systems Leadership Program.
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New Know How
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New Know How, led by Emma Blomkamp, focuses on developing practical capability in co-design and systemic practice. Current training spans the continuum of the Co-Design Maturity Model, a strengths-based framework for assessing individual competencies and team capability as well as organisational maturity in co-design. These courses address the relational dimensions of working with complexity, including participation, place, power, facilitation, and shared decision-making. The programme ranges from short intensives and online courses to longer practitioner development and mentoring.
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DRRS MOOC
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The Designing Resilient Regenerative Systems MOOC Series, developed by Systemic Design Labs at ETH Zurich, offers four free, self-paced courses that move from sustainability and regeneration through systems thinking and systemic design to real-world transformative design praxis. Hosted on edX and taught in English, the MOOCs are open to students and practitioners from varied disciplinary backgrounds. Each course takes approximately six to eleven weeks, with three to five hours per week, and can be taken independently or as part of the complete learning journey. An optional edX certificate is available for a fee. Program Director: Tobias Luthe.
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Learning in Contexts
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Since launching Contexts—The Systemic Design Journal in 2022, three articles have traced the emergence of systemic design praxis across its intellectual foundations, methodological development, and approaches to learning. Harold Nelson's invited essay, Systemic Design as Born from the Berkeley Bubble Matrix, situates the field within the systems thinking, design inquiry, and cultural ferment of Berkeley in the 1960s. Haley Fitzpatrick, Tobias Luthe, and Birger Sevaldson then demonstrate Methodological Pluralism in Practice, combining scientific inquiry, participatory gigamapping, embodied methods, and attention to inner resilience across place-based sustainability transformations. In the current volume, Andreas Wettre and Birger Sevaldson examine the Conceptual Foundations for Learning in Complexity (Part I of II), describing a pluralistic and reflexive learning ecology for developing the capacity to navigate complexity, collaborate, and make informed design judgements (advance publication now available).
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SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2026. The RSD15 Symposium theme is pluralism, foregrounding questions of epistemic justice, intercultural dialogue, and the ethics of collaboration across disciplinary, institutional, and geographical boundaries. RSD15—Shades of Systemic Design invites us to engage methodological diversity not as fragmentation, but as a condition for collective learning, situated inquiry, and creative adaptation.
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