Teaching

Course description: Around the world, people speak of living through a “polycrisis”—a time when overlapping crises and disruptions trigger fear and paralysis. Prof. Yuen Yuen Ang invites you to flip the script: from polycrisis to polytunity, seeing disruption as a portal to new possibilities.

Polytunity opens into Ang’s paradigm - AIM (Adaptive, Inclusive, Moral) Political Economy - which she has seeded and applied throughout her earlier work (How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, China’s Gilded Age).

Together we’ll explore AIM’s three pillars: Adaptive (systems not machine thinking), Inclusive (diverse pathways, not one universal template), and Moral (ideas are shaped by power and positionality)—and trace how they can inspire both new research questions, empirical agendas, and real-world applications.

As an example of paradigm-building, Ang will also share how her “intellectual forest” grows from roots to canopy, extending across collaborative research projects and public engagement programs.

Course day & time: Mondays, 2-5 PM

Course Description: This exploratory PhD seminar invites students into the emerging space where human research practices and artificial intelligence begin to overlap, intersect, and challenge one another.

Anchored on the concept of directed improvisation, which I first applied in the context of Chinese economic development (Ang 2016) and now extend to AI, the course treats the human researcher as a director—shaping the goals, prompts, and context which AI, like a responsive actor, contributes to the creative process.

We will not treat AI as a shortcut, a threat, or a mere tool, but rather as a partner in thought that requires attunement and direction. To that ends, we will practice thoughtful ways to work with AI to enhance the research process, pairing hands-on exercises with discussions about the history of technological disruption and contemporary debates about AI.

This is not a course with fixed rules or prepackaged answers. AI is a disruptive technology that unsettles many foundational assumptions about learning, authorship, and originality. Our goal is to think together, test out unfamiliar methods, and engage some of the deeper questions that haven’t yet been fully named.

My role is to offer a compass—directed improvisation—but not a blueprint. What we discover will emerge through practice and experimentation.

Course day & time: Thursday, 11 AM - 1 PM