The Paradoxical Garden
Marili de Weerdt
We were blown away by Marili de Weerdt’s opening of her
Master’s Practical exam. Marili is one of our Programme
Navigators overseeing the academic management of our
interdisciplinary modules.
The Paradoxical Garden focused on human-plant
interactions to emphasise the overlap between nature
and culture, underlining their existence in a relational web.
Her aim was to draw attention to how people and plants
share the garden environment, to show that plants in the
garden are participants in a complex system. The garden
was visualised as space where relationships, traditionally
perceived as binary, co-exist and blur into one another
while their difference is re-affirmed at the same time, thus
the resulting paradox.
Dr. Ria
Big ups to Ria who graduated with a PhD of Management in
Technology and Innovation (through the Da Vinci Institute).
Ria’s thesis is titled:
The Development of a Framework for Postgraduate
Studies in Communication Design.
Considering postgraduate studies? To invest time,
energy, finances, perhaps putting a promising
career on hold, and asking for sacrifices from
your close relations - all this must surely add up to
considerable reward, or why bother?
Small wonder we involve our full circle, our family,
friends, lecturers, industry professionals and
mentors. These conversations can be invaluable –
apart from the support you may get, the questions
about your reasons for wanting to further yourself
will challenge you.
But the clarity and insights that you gain can be of
great help to distinguish between productive and
potentially counterproductive reasons for pursuing
a specific programme. Consider two of the most
compelling reasons to pursue postgraduate
studies, as well as red-flagging the merits or
demerits of their counter-arguments:
Reason #1: passion and engagement
Postgraduate studies allow you to delve deeper
and gather more in-depth knowledge within the
field. Advanced study develops the required
mental agility to synthesise information, to
produce compelling arguments, and to analyse
and conceive meaningful solutions to challenges.
Deep engagement is both fruitful and rewarding,
but only if your interest, and perhaps even
passion, is genuine. Without this approach to
the field, the work is inevitably laborious, tedious
and demotivating. Enrol for the postgraduate
programme of your choice when you have no
doubts that you are genuinely compelled by the
complexities and challenges of the field and its
relation to the world around you.
You may find you naturally incline to the themes
and issues of relevance to your field whenever and
wherever they appear. It may be current affairs,
news about industry projects or even the plot of
a TV series. The ideal postgraduate programme
should then enable you to involve yourself in your
field of choice to the fullest extent while honing
your abilities and skills. It should also expose you
to unique opportunities to apply advanced thinking
to practice, to work on real-life briefs and projects,
and ideally participate in transdisciplinary teams.