The Sciences and the Humanities: Two Cultures? A Module for an International and Interdisciplinary Core Curriculum

This curriculum is one of the outcomes of the research project „Public Humanities and Pedagogy in the Global South“, funded by the Government of India (SPARC project no. 1871). The project brought together an international and interdisciplinary team, with meetings in Germany (2024) and India (2025). As part of our collaboration, we designed a new course tailored for STEM students at BITS-Pilani, Goa Campus. Each contributor brought unique disciplinary perspectives to the course and taught sessions to a diverse group of students during the spring semester of 2025. The course evolved into an intercultural learning space and provided a platform not only to examine the classic „two cultures“ divide—between the natural and engineering sciences on the one hand and humanities and social sciences on the other—but also to engage with the cultural and national diversity of our team. More broadly, we reflected on Indian-German research collaboration, the role that the humanities in technically-oriented institutions of higher learning (such as German Technical Universities), and the dynamics and challenges of international academic collaboration.We are convinced that the long-standing debate on the „two cultures“ remains a productive starting point for students, educators and researchers interested in critically examining their roles and positions within their institutions, academic communities, and the global system of science and higher education. The topics and ideas presented here build on the course developed for BITS-Pilani and is intended not as a fixed program, but as a flexible toolkit. It is designed for educators seeking to create and adapt similar courses—particularly in alternative institutional and international contexts. The idea of publishing such “core curricula” as open educational resources emerged in connection with another project: the Rhine Ruhr Center for Science Communication Research (RRC), funded by the Volkswagen Foundation (2021-2026). A central insight of our work is that teaching—especially in interdisciplinary settings—should be recognized as a vital form of science communication. Here, students are not seen as passive recipients of knowledge, but as active intermediaries who bridge the different lifeworlds of the university, their communities, personal networks, and their future professions.