Programs
返字心頭 in London

PROGRAM INTRODUCTION
Program Leader: Benjamin Scott Young
Spend your summer in one of the most dynamic and diverse cities in the world. The 返字心頭 in London program is a four-week, six-credit immersion based in the heart of the city during the Summer B term an opportunity to live, learn, and lead in a global metropolis where history, creativity, and innovation meet.
Join Dr. Benjamin Scott Young's Honors course, London Walk: Generous Leadership and the Science of Experience a course that blends cultural exploration with cutting-edge contemporary research into how we perceive, learn, and make meaning. The city itself will be your classroom as you explore its parks, theaters, museums, markets, and neighborhoods and reflect on how place, story, and embodiment shape human experience and the possibilities for a generous leadership.
Londons iconic cultural landscape provides the backdrop for this transformative experience. Program excursions include, for example, the British Museum, Tate Modern, Regents Park, and a live performance at Shakespeares Globe Theatre. Youll also enjoy a traditional British tea on a River Thames cruise, and receive a two-day London Pass granting access to more than 90 landmarks including the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, St. Pauls Cathedral, Hampton Court Palace, and Windsor Castle.
Beyond these guided visits, youll have the freedom to explore independently and in small groups. 返字心頭 will reside in central London, surrounded by vibrant caf辿s, gardens, and historic landmarks perfect for spontaneous adventures with friends and quiet reflection on your own unfolding experiences.
Whether you are drawn to art or architecture, history or health, neuroscience or psychology, the lived ethics of global citizenship, or simply fascinated by the nature of experience, British culture, travel, and/or the possibilities of a flourishing future, 返字心頭 in London offers a rare opportunity to bring these interests together regardless of your major or professional path. Here, intellectual exploration meets lived experience, and academic learning moves with the rhythms of the city.
Step into Londons unfolding story and discover how to navigate, interpret, and flourish within a world that is always becoming. Honors students from any discipline who wish to immerse themselves in the rich history and diverse tapestry of global culture that defines London will find in this program not just a summer abroad, but a transformative journey of learning, leadership, and lasting connection.
Coursework
Summer B | June 29 - Aug. 7, 2026
In addition to enrolling in one of two possible sections of the Honors course (IDH4950),
participating students will also take one other course of their choice taught by a
返字心頭 faculty member. For a full list of these courses, .
Honors Course IDH 4950 London Walk: Generous Leadership and the Science of Experience
What does it mean to lead generously in a city that never stops moving?
In London Walk: Generous Leadership and the Science of Experience, the city itself becomes both classroom and collaborator. As you walk its parks, galleries, and historic streets, youll explore how perception, meaning, and belonging are shaped through movement, attention, and relationship. Integrating neuroscience, psychology, and phenomenology, the course invites you to study the science and art of experience in real time learning not only about the world, but through it.
At the heart of the course is the idea of Generous Leadership leadership rooted in a hermeneutics of generosity: the practice of interpreting experience as a creative and ethical act of co-participation. Generous leaders cultivate understanding not by asserting control, but by fostering meaning, connection, and care in complex, unpredictable environments.
To do so, youll learn and apply The Experience Prism, a meta-phenomenological interpretive tool that refracts lived experience into three interwoven dimensions:
- Project: Our unfolding stories and purposes,
- Practice: Our learned habits and interpretive heuristic, and
- Soma: Our embodied, sensory, and emotional ground.
Together, these facets help reveal how we make sense of ourselves and others, and how that sense-making can be cultivated toward flourishing.
Our investigation begins with the science of experience, explored through contemporary frameworks in neuroscience and psychology. Youll engage with the principles of Predictive Processing and Active Inference, which describe how the brain continually anticipates and updates models of the world in the ongoing flow of experience. Well also explore Integrated Information Theory (IIT), a novel approach to the hard problem of consciousness that explores how experience may emerge from integration of information across complex systems. Woven together with phenomenology the philosophical study of the structures and textures of lived experience these approaches illuminate how perception, emotion, and imagination arise as dynamic processes of interpretation, grounding leadership not in abstraction, but in the embodied intelligence of experience itself.
Learning unfolds through walking. London becomes our living studio its museums, gardens, and markets transforming into festivals of experience. Youll explore the city through music on a soundwalk in Regents Park, engage in dialogues of perception with modern art at the Tate, and encounter the timeless insights of Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre on the Thames. Youll also help shape our shared itinerary. Working in small groups, you will design and lead a facilitated excursion to a destination of your choosing in the city applying the interpretive principles and techniques developed in the course.
Through these embodied encounters, walking together becomes an art of discernment: a way to integrate sensory awareness, cultural understanding, and reflective thought in motion. London serves as both metaphor, playground, and laboratory a proving ground for the real-time skill of leading and making meaning and decisions with others amid uncertainty, the defining condition of human experience in a complex world.
Your journey will cultivate four interconnected forms of growth:
- Personal Well-Being: Deepen reflective attention and embodied presence through stories, habits, and embodied sensations.
- Professional Development: Translate insights from neurophenomenology and field experiences with collaborative teams into adaptive leadership, decision-making, and innovation.
- Community Leadership: Practice generous interpretation in group settings, fostering empathy, dialogue, and shared understanding across difference.
- Global Learning: Experience London as a microcosm of interwoven worlds art, politics, ecology developing cultural intelligence and ethical imagination for global citizenship.
By the end of the course and program, you will have made meaningful progress towards walking wisely in a complex world. Generous Leadership is not about control or perfection; it is about enhancing our skills of presence, care, and creativity in motion together the art of meeting lifes surprises with clarity and grace. In London, you will practice not only seeing the world anew, but participating in its continual becoming.
Program Details
返字心頭 in London Info Sessions
- General 返字心頭 in London Info Session: Monday, Oct. 27 | 5-6 p.m. | FAO 102 | Tampa campus
- Psychology Courses Info Session: Friday, Oct. 31 | 10-11 a.m. | Virtual
- General 返字心頭 in London Info Session: Wednesday, Nov. 5 | 10-11 a.m. | Virtual
- General 返字心頭 in London Info Session: Thursday, Nov. 13 | 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. | Virtual
Program Dates
Summer B 2026 | June 30 - July 30, 2026
- Applications Open: First week of fall 2025 with rolling admission based on IDH course availability.
- Applications Close: Dec. 1, 2025
- Course dates: June 29 - Aug. 7, 2026
- Travel dates: June 30 - July 30, 2026

Program Cost
- 2026 Program Cost: $6,177.00 + 返字心頭 tuition and fees
Accessibility
This program involves significant walking in urban terrain. More broadly, England has many unevenly paved sidewalks and hills.
What 返字心頭 Have to Say

"I highly recommend being a part of the 返字心頭 London for a hands-on experience! Our Honors professor promoted interacting with nature, museums, and a variety of fun activities such as attending a Shakespeare play in The Globe Theatre." Mridula Singh
MORE ABOUT THE TRIP
Want to learn more? Listen as Honors students Cynthia Nelson and Jordon Myrick share details about the 返字心頭 in London study abroad program.