Through her own experience, she describes the changing role of the architect in relation to different societal urgencies – from the economic crisis in Greece 2010 with protests and occupations in Athens to the 2015 refugee crisis related to the war in Syria. In this context she explains how the school has organised a new master programme in Architecture and Urban Design, and developed pedagogical methodologies based on situated learning, hands-on and action-oriented approaches, and a 1:1 perspective, which has been used in a series of studio courses in response to different global challenges. In the 2019 course, students engaged with refugee issues in Lesvos and Izmir through collaborations with local organisations and people on site to develop tools for encounters between local communities and people in displacement. During the pandemic in 2020, another course dedicated to the same topic was organised in collaboration with a number of local actors in Izmir and with the Architecture Faculty at Yasar University in Izmir. Amalia presents how they have used different methodologies of engagement resulting in a number of collective strategies and individual proposals ranging from social tools to spatial organisation and built environments.