The PEATLI Project is a transdisciplinary learning initiative offering UQ students from a wide range of disciplines the opportunity to explore real-life, complex issues in Indonesia. The project, designed and facilitated by A/Prof. Elske van de Fliert, Director of the Centre for Communication and Social Change (CfCSC), has engaged 100 students in seven cohorts between 2019 and 2024. The New Colombo Plan (NCP) Mobility Program has just approved the proposal for the mobility of an eighth cohort, worth $69,300, to be conducted across Semester 2 and Summer Semester 2026-27.
For this iteration of the project, PEATLI stands for ‘People, Environment, And Transdisciplinary Learning – Indonesia.’ Within the new NCP guidelines, nine UQ students will spend seven weeks in Indonesia, including four weeks of language training and acculturation at Universitas Brawijaya (UB - a major research partner of the CfCSC) in Malang, and three weeks in Trenggalek Regency, East Java. In close collaboration with UB students, they will conduct a participatory situation analysis with
local government and rural communities to explore policies and programs relating to the Sustainable Development Goals.
This project brings teaching, research and (international) engagement together: while students learn to apply their disciplinary knowledge in a transdisciplinary manner to real-life complex problems, the findings of their work will inform research proposal development at the UB-UQ collaborative research centre PERINTIS (Social Change, Innovation and Digital Transition) that was launched at UB earlier this year. Expressions of interest from students to participate in PEATLI-8 will be solicited in early 2026.
