Liberal Arts Education Student Conference (LESC) in Giessen: “The City of the Future – Connected Minds and Visionary Ideas“
From November 21 to 23, 2025, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU) became a meeting point for students from across Europe. Under the title “The City of the Future – Connected Minds and Visionary Ideas” the event brought together diverse disciplinary perspectives to explore one central question: How can cities of the future be imagined, designed, and made sustainable? From the outset, the structure of the conference encouraged active engagement rather than passive listening, starting with student presentations on self-chosen topics from “Mindfulness City”, “Cities for the Collective: Third Places” over “Adaptive Governance” and “Gender Constructs and their reproduction through GenAi” to “Hope for the Furture” and “Beyond Utopia” and “The History of the Future”. As a member of the organizing and moderation team, Melissa Susur observed a decisive shift in how participants approached knowledge: “Once disciplinary perspectives were made explicit, discussions shifted from receiving input toward actively developing knowledge.”
What began as a series of lectures by students and guest speakers quickly evolved into a collaborative process in which students tested ideas, challenged assumptions, and refined arguments together. The opening sessions illustrated the complexity of urban development. Contributions from sociology, political science, futures research, biology, and history highlighted how cities are shaped not only by infrastructure and policy, but also by social dynamics, ecological constraints, and historical trajectories. Rather than presenting a single narrative, the speakers offered contrasting lenses—setting the stage for the work that followed. Among them were Apl. Prof. Dr. York Kautt (Sociology, “Living Labs as Drivers of Transformation“), Dr. Stefan Carsten (Futures Research, “The Future of the City”), Dr. Nils Hasenbein (Biology, “It’s not easy being green – The long way towards green infrastructure”), Dr. Bennet Rosswag (History, “Nature in a Grid. Planned (Parts of) Cities in early Modernity”), Emilia Blank (Political Science, “Citizens´Assemblies as a democratic update for the city?”), and Maria Ertl from the Hessian Ministry of the Environment (“Visions for the City of the Future”). Together, their perspectives framed urban development as a multi-layered field shaped by social dynamics, ecological constraints, historical trajectories and political governance.
The guest lectures set the stage for the collaborative work that started on the second day. Students now moved into interdisciplinary groups. Here, differences became productive. These sessions underscored that sustainable urban solutions depend on coordinated work across disciplines. Discussions were rarely straightforward. Instead, they were marked by moments of clarification, negotiation, and reinterpretation. Progress did not emerge from immediate agreement, but from the effort to make different ways of thinking understandable to one another.
These dynamics were particularly evident in debates on green infrastructure and urban inequality. Ethical, legal, and historical perspectives were not merged into a single framework but remained in productive tension, fostering more precise and well‑argued positions. A compelling example arose during a session on urban infrastructure, when a debate unfolded between a student focusing on legal frameworks and another specializing on environmental ecology. At the heart of the discussion was the question of whether private homeowners could be legally required to install green roofts, or whether financial incentives represented the only practical approach. This constructive disagreement pushed the group to move beyond idealistic visions, leading them to develop proposals that carefully balanced ecological necessity with legal feasibility.
This discussion proved to be the starting point for rigorous debate, ultimately culminating in the final stage of the conference, where student groups outlined and presented their concepts for modern and sustainable cities to Prof. Dr. Claus Leggewie. His feedback repeatedly returned to one key question: how can these ideas be implemented and what power relations are holding us back when encouraging change? By confronting the proposals with political and strategic realities, the discussion shifted toward feasibility without losing its conceptual ambition, nevertheless concluding with encouragement to “Get active” and explore interdisciplinary approaches.
Over the course of three intensive days, it became clear that addressing the complexity of urban development requires more than short-term academic exchange. It depends on sustained engagement across perspectives and continuous collaboration. In Giessen, the most substantial ideas emerged precisely when participants moved beyond disciplinary boundaries and combined their expertise with creative thinking.
The conference did not end with the final session. Building on the connections and ideas developed in Giessen, participants initiated the Liberal Arts and Sciences Student Network and through the launch of the Instagram platform, “las.studentnetwork”, a digital space was created for ongoing dialogue and future project development.
What became consistently apparent over these three days is that interdisciplinary collaboration is not simply about combining perspectives — it is about working through their differences. The LESC in Gießen demonstrated how this process can generate ideas that are both innovative and grounded in real-world challenges. Supported by the European Consortium of Liberal Arts and Sciences (ECOLAS) and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (CLAS) at JLU Giessen, the conference stands as an example of how academic exchange can evolve into lasting collaboration.
The following images capture the complete progression of the conference: starting with the foundational expert inputs, followed by intensive group work and discussions, and culminating in the presentation of student concepts. The final stage included a critical review with Prof. Dr. Claus Leggewie to evaluate the practical viability of each visionary idea.
To capture the multidimensional dialogue of the conference, a Graphic Recording was a central element of our knowledge management. Throughout the three days, illustrator Ka Schmitz accompanied every session, translating complex academic theories and student-led ideas into a live visual narrative. This process did more than just documenting results; it acted as a visual anchor, allowing participants to see the "red thread" of our interdisciplinary exchange in real-time. By transforming spoken words into shared imagery, the Graphic Recording bridged the gap between different mental models, proving that the City of the Future is as much about visionary aesthetics as it is about structured governance.
Text: College of Liberal Arts & Sciences/ Melissa Susur
Pictures: JLU/ Katrina Friese
Graphic Recording: Ka Schmitz