Global Summer Studies 2026 General Pre-Departure Meeting

For art and design students interested in studying symbiotic relationships in the Lowveld Bushveld ecosystem of South Africa as inspiration for the creative practice. Taught by conservationist, educator, writer, and veterinarian Dr. Lucy Spelman, a Senior lecturer in History, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences, this course give students the opportunity on location to create/make new work of art, design, and writing informed and inspired by their understanding of the many connections with the nature and their conservation value.

Summer Course FAQ

“The rivers — beings that have always inhabited worlds in different forms — suggest to me that if there is a future to be imagined, it is an ancestral one, because it has always been here.”

—Ailton Krenak

Over three weeks, students will engage in meetings with scientists, workshops with artists and local organizations, field excursions, museum visits, and interactions with Indigenous and riverside communities. The program will combine days of theoretical grounding, forest immersion, boat journeys along the Amazon’s rivers, and studio work in the city of Manaus. Ancestral knowledge and non-human technologies will be explored as essential components for building more sustainable relationships with the forest — and beyond.

This course has reached capacity, waitlist applications are now being accepted through the RISD Global application portal.

Can Okinawa be a design laboratory for planetary futures? How do we grow resilient and creative on a warming planet?

The Japanese mainland is moving toward a subtropical climate, and most regions of the world have experienced excessive heat in recent years. This course investigates the material ecologies of Okinawa, a subtropical island whose cultural and architectural identity has been shaped by climate, history, and politics. Okinawa’s arts and buildings evolved under the pressures of heat, humidity, typhoons, and salt air—conditions that are no longer exceptional, but increasingly the reality of our global present. With summers growing longer and hotter each year, what lessons might be drawn from Okinawa’s centuries of adaptation to help us design for a future of rising temperatures worldwide?

This course has reached capacity, waitlist applications are now being accepted through the RISD Global application portal.

This course will take place in the heart of the manga and anime industry, Tokyo, in collaboration with industry professionals and HAL: College of Technology and Design, a leading arts institution with a comprehensive Manga, Anime, and Illustration undergraduate and graduate program. The program will be led by a team of industry professionals spanning various disciplines related to manga and anime.

This travel course is designed for students interested in exploring China’s environment, history, society, and human–nature relationships, with a particular focus on the Yangtze River. Beginning in Shanghai, where the river meets the sea, we will journey westward to Hangzhou, Yangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan, Yueyang, Jingzhou, Yichang, Chongqing, and Chengdu. Along the way, we will study and visit city lakes, water towns, museums, religious sites, farmlands, wetlands, and both historical and modern water-management infrastructures. Through these site-based encounters, students will gain deeper insight into Chinese history, ecology, and biodiversity, while experiencing the aesthetic and cultural significance of waterscapes.

This course emphasizes the unique opportunity to learn Chinese Ceramic History and a hands-on study to learn new studio practices of clay art and its inherent characteristics and its possibilities as both utilitarian and sculptural ceramics. The focus of this class will be on the foundation skills of hand-building, wheel-throwing, and surface decoration in a rich historic and cultural context of study in Beijing, Xi'an, Jingdezhen and Shanghai, China. The elements of this course will be taught through lectures, demonstrations, critiques, and assignments.