There is a reason for the hyphen in Dis-Course.
It is a very small space, but perhaps an important one.
We live in an age increasingly governed by metrics. Universities measure credits, learning outcomes, employability, citations, research impact and institutional performance. These measures serve purposes, of course, but they also shape how we understand the value of education and intellectual activity. What cannot be measured risks becoming less visible, even when it remains essential.
At the same time, much of our communication has moved into screen-mediated environments. We increasingly encounter carefully constructed arguments, polished responses and, more recently, AI-generated exchanges that can appear remarkably articulate without necessarily producing genuine understanding.
Dis-Course proposes something slightly different: a space in which we do not necessarily know where a conversation will take us.
The hyphen interrupts the word discourse. It introduces a pause, a separation, perhaps even a disagreement. It interrupts an established course of thought and creates the possibility of another direction. For me, this small mark represents something fundamental to intellectual exchange: the recognition that an encounter with another person might change what we think we know.
There is an old philosophical image that I find particularly appropriate.
Heraclitus is famously associated with the proposition that we cannot step into the same river twice. His follower Cratylus reportedly went further, suggesting that we cannot step into the same river even once. The world is already changing as we attempt to describe it. Aristotle recounts that Cratylus eventually became so sceptical of fixed assertions that he abandoned verbal argument and simply moved his finger.
There is something compelling about this gesture. The pointing finger does not necessarily establish a conclusion. It directs our attention towards something that remains open to examination.
Perhaps this is also what discussion should do.
Debate should not simply be a demonstration of intellectual superiority, nor an exercise in proving that one person is right and another is wrong. Its purpose need not be the production of consensus. Disagreement can be productive precisely because it unsettles our assumptions and requires us to reconsider the foundations of our arguments.
There are long traditions of understanding intellectual exchange in this way. In the Buddhist scholastic practices associated with Nalanda and subsequently developed in Tibetan monastic education, debate became a disciplined method of testing propositions, challenging assumptions and developing understanding through direct engagement. Knowledge emerges not merely from receiving an explanation but from having to confront and defend an idea.
This understanding of intellectual exchange also informs my view of the university.
Higher education must, of course, prepare people for professional life. Students should graduate with knowledge, abilities and the confidence to contribute meaningfully to their chosen fields. Yet if employability becomes the sole measure of educational success, we risk reducing the university to a training institution.
A university should also function as an intellectual and social community. It should provide opportunities for encounters between disciplines, generations, professions and ways of thinking. Knowledge is not simply transferred from someone who possesses it to someone who does not. It is questioned, challenged, interpreted and transformed through participation.
This is why co-curricular activities matter.
When people attend a public lecture, join a discussion or participate in an intellectual exchange without receiving credits, marks or certificates, they demonstrate something that is easily overlooked within contemporary systems of assessment: the desire to learn for its own sake.
Curiosity does not always require a measurable outcome.
Dis-Course emerged from this conviction. What began as a university-based programme of public talks and conversations has developed into an independent interdisciplinary platform, based in Cyprus and international in outlook. With Alexander College as its Founding Academic Partner, it seeks to bring researchers, artists, designers, scientists, philosophers, practitioners, students and wider publics into conversations that might otherwise remain confined to particular institutions or specialist communities.
The ambition is not to create another conference series in which established knowledge is presented to a passive audience. Nor is it to suggest that every discussion must lead to agreement, collaboration or a tangible result.
Sometimes the value lies in the encounter itself.
Our opening event, with Dr Kleanthis Neokleous of CYENS Centre of Excellence, offered an appropriate illustration. His presentation demonstrated how technological research can intersect with artistic practice, cultural heritage, performance and the histories of places. Projects involving immersive reconstructions of inaccessible spaces in Nicosia, virtual performance and interactive museum experiences emerged through collaborations between people working in different disciplines.
The conversation that followed moved into questions of accessibility, public engagement, research funding, institutional sustainability and the relationship between research and commercialisation. These questions extended beyond the technologies presented and opened the discussion towards wider social and institutional concerns.
This is precisely the kind of movement that the hyphen is intended to accommodate.
Dis-Course is not a rejection of expertise, academic rigour or institutional structures. Rather, it is an attempt to create a space in which those structures do not determine the limits of conversation.
A space where a technologist might encounter a philosopher, an artist might question a scientist, and a member of the public might introduce a perspective that changes the direction of an academic discussion.
The hyphen is therefore not simply a graphic distinction. It is an invitation to interrupt the expected course of thought.
To question without necessarily opposing. To disagree without seeking dominance. To listen without already preparing a response.
And perhaps, occasionally, to leave a conversation thinking something we could not have thought before entering it.
That, for me, is the purpose of Dis-Course.