Introducing CTDC Academy: A Conversation on Learning, AI, and Practice

Event Summary

The English launch of CTDC Academy opened with a powerful question: what kind of learning is needed in a world where institutions are under strain, technologies are reshaping everyday life, and professionals are being asked to make difficult decisions with limited time, resources, and certainty?

In this live conversation, Dr Nour Abu-Assab and Dr Nof Nasser-Eddin joined Dr Sara Shroff to introduce CTDC Academy not simply as a platform for courses, but as a new learning space shaped by more than a decade of CTDC’s work across research, consultancy, organisational practice, training, and critical pedagogy.

The conversation traced the story behind CTDC: from its early beginnings as a response to the widening gap between academic knowledge and real-world practice, to its evolution into a consultancy, and now into an Academy. Nour and Nof reflected on the limits of conventional education, the pressures of donor-driven development work, and the urgent need for learning that is rigorous, accessible, politically grounded, and connected to lived realities.

At the heart of the discussion was a clear challenge to how professional learning is often imagined. CTDC Academy does not treat education as the simple transfer of information. Instead, the event framed learning as a practice of judgement, reflexivity, unlearning, co-learning, and reimagining what is possible. It asked what happens when learning is designed not only to explain the world, but to help people act with more clarity, responsibility, and care within it.

The launch also introduced Ethics and Foundations of AI Use, the Academy’s first course. Rather than presenting AI as a technical trend or a set of tools to master, the conversation placed it within the realities people are already facing: students using AI without guidance, organisations banning it while staff use it in secret, professionals feeling overwhelmed by tool-chasing, and institutions struggling to keep up with the ethical, legal, and practical implications of AI use.

The discussion moved beyond the usual divide between excitement and fear. Speakers and participants explored AI in relation to judgement, labour, accessibility, neurodiversity, data protection, safeguarding, environmental harm, donor systems, war, marginalisation, and power. The central argument was clear: AI cannot be ignored, but it also cannot be adopted uncritically. To engage it responsibly, people first need to understand it.

The event also highlighted the collective work behind the Academy, including the technical development of the platform, the communications work, and the wider network of collaborators, educators, and practitioners who have shaped CTDC’s journey. The Academy was presented as an evolving space, with future courses, lectures, instructors, and a community platform planned as part of its next phase.

Overall, the launch positioned CTDC Academy as a response to this historical moment: a time of political crisis, institutional pressure, shrinking resources, technological acceleration, and growing demands on people to act wisely in complex conditions. It invited participants to see learning not as a passive process, but as a way of strengthening judgement, deepening responsibility, and creating the conditions for more thoughtful practice.