English

This course studies the arts of Flanders, Germany, and England during the 15th and 16th century, with special emphasis on painting and sculpture dated up to 1603, the year of Queen Elizabeth I's death. Important components of this course are the investigation of how the term Renaissance is applicable to the artistic styles of these regions during these times, and the extent to which the taste for Gothic survived and was amalgamated within the new Renaissance aesthetic.

This course provides a rigorous introduction to game theory, the mathematical study of strategic interaction. Designed for advanced undergraduates, it equips students with the tools to model and analyze strategic situations across disciplines such as economics, political science, and law. Students learn to formulate strategic situations as non-cooperative games in normal or extensive form; analyze classic games such as the prisoner’s dilemma, models of oligopolistic competition, and job market signaling; determine optimal strategies based on beliefs about others’ behavior; apply core solution concepts to predict strategic behavior, including Nash equilibrium, Mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium, Subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium, Bayesian Nash equilibrium, and Perfect Bayesian equilibrium.

This course introduces students to five key Scottish ghost-fiction writers and their most memorable fantastic fictions: James Hogg, J.M. Barrie, Margaret Oliphant, Robert Louis Stevenson, and George MacDonald. It invites students to think about the role that the supernatural continues to play in Scottish writing through exploration of its representation in Romantic and Victorian fiction. Through closely analyzing excerpts from these writers and discussing the various wider cultural, social, and political anxieties and fears that can be expressed via the supernatural, students explore the historical context and literary impact of the Scottish Gothic.

This course examines how life arose and evolved into the myriad of forms it takes today. The course introduces the principles of evolution and explores the tree of life, highlighting the major evolutionary advances that have enabled organisms to exploit every habitat on Earth. The major living groups of microbes, plants and animals are presented and the key features of their biology are discussed and illustrated. A wide range of examples are given, spanning microbial parasites, plants, fungi, jellyfish and corals, worms, insects, crustaceans, fish, birds, mammals. The course examines how they feed, survive and reproduce, and, importantly, how they impact our daily lives.

This course examines the intersections between international and domestic policy making. It explores the role of international governmental organizations and treaties, multinational corporations and transnational advocacy in shaping policy decisions. The course reflects critically on the scholarly debate around globalization and the state, and the extent to which national governments retain the capacity to determine their own policy directions. It considers the diffusion of policy ideas internationally and the transfer of policies and programs from one country to another. It covers the factors that interfere with intergovernmental cooperation and coordination and evaluate the ways in which policy makers respond to global policy challenges.

The overarching goal of the course is for the students to acquire basic knowledge of linear algebra which is necessary for further studies in mathematics and natural sciences. Special emphasis is placed on developing the mathematical theory for vector spaces in a systematic way that contributes to strengthening the students' ability to absorb mathematical text, to conduct mathematical reasoning, to solve problems of both theoretical and applied nature and to communicate mathematics. The course covers Matrices; Determinants; Linear spaces; Euclidean spaces; Linear mappings; Spectral theory; Systems of linear ordinary differential equations; and Quadratic forms.

This course examines satellite systems, describing their main applications and providing a detailed introduction into the principles of orbital mechanics. It focuses on orbital mechanics, covering orbit description and analysis, perturbations, orbital manoeuvres, interplanetary transfers and launch systems.

The course introduces students to the phenomenon of historical and contemporary diasporic literature and literatures of migration. Topics covered include: the ways in which literary works reflect on the experience of migration; how narratives and poems contribute to the imagination of cultural and political collectives; and how exile and displacement trigger efforts to imagine cultural belonging outside of national confines. In the wake of globalization, the world has become increasingly interconnected, and the course studies how different literary texts respond to this new situation, offering students insights into how literature reflects on cross-cultural encounters and contributes to our understanding of experiences of displacement and diaspora. This is the second course of the specialization Literature Across Borders.

Organizations are facing a wide range of unexpected challenges of crises, requiring them to develop strategic thinking in order to prepare for, mitigate, respond to, and recover from unexpected occurrences. The aim of this course is to develop strategic skills in mitigating issues and managing crises that organizations encounter. This course places crisis communication in organizational, social, and global contexts. The course emphasizes real-world application of crisis communication concepts, theories, and principles. Thematically, the course covers the foundational of crisis communication, three phases of crisis management, internal and external crisis communication, media and stakeholder relations, and issues and trends in crisis communication.