Throughout March and April, the College of Design will sponsor four lectures as a part of “Transparent Geographies: The Dean’s Lecture Series.”

Biswapriya Sanyal, chair of the department of urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will launch the series Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. in Kocimski Auditorium in the College of Design, with a presentation titled “Globalization, Compromise and Planning Theory.”

“The series will be a great benefit to all students and faculty of the College of Design, as well as students all across campus,” said College of Design Dean Mark Engelbrecht.

“It will bring interesting, layered ideas about culture, the way we live, the way we work, things that many different people will enjoy, regardless of their background.”

Each speaker is aimed at a specific department in the design college, said Heather Sauer, communication specialist for the Institute for Design Research and Outreach.

“All four speakers are internationally renowned in their fields, and are meant to enrich the environment for both students and faculty,” she said. “The intent of the series is to create unexpected connections between the four departments.”

The speakers come from a variety of different areas of specialization and cultural viewpoints, Engelbrecht said.

“They are architects, planners, cultural historians; they come from a number of different schools and cultures and are all prestigiously known,” he said.

Katerina Ruedi Ray, director of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Architecture, will present “Art/Architecture: Pedagogies/Practices” March 28.

Edward Dimendburg, assistant professor of architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, will deliver a lecture on “Film Noir and Postwar Spatial Anxiety” April 3.

The schedule will wind down with M. Christine Boyer, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor in Architecture and Urbanism at Princeton University’s School of Architecture.

Boyer will present “Back to the Future: the City of Tomorrow” April 18.

“All the speakers are notable in their fields; their title is in a specific department, but their interest and knowledge is generally much broader than that,” Sauer said.

This lecture series is a little different from most, and is preparation for a longer, more thematic series that is in the works for next year, said Jamie Horwitz, associate professor of architecture.

“We are really taking this seriously,” Horwitz said. “We have been reading the works of these speakers to get a better knowledge of their interests. We really want to make them a part of the curriculum.”

The series is free and open to the public. All lectures begin at 5:30 p.m. in Kocimski Auditorium in the College of Design.

“We are just trying to look at the future, trying to find ways to collaborate and cross disciplines,” Engelbrecht said. “We need to think of and incorporate new ideas into our program, and, by bringing these lecturers in that have a way of looking at their disciplines from many different perspectives, that is what we hope to do.”