English

This course provides students with a comprehensive, critical analysis of fashion. It provides historical context for the emergence of the fashion industry, examines theories that account for its development and the role it plays in modern societies, and explores critical responses to key issues facing the industry today. The course critically examines the idea that the emergence of fashion both shapes and reflects modern culture and society. From a historical perspective, and in terms of western fashion specifically, this means understanding how fashion has moved from being the preserve of an elite practice to an everyday one, charting its movement from courtly societies in Europe to 20th century spread of fashion to the high street and to subcultural fashions, and from a system of style controlled by a small group of elites (couture designers for example) to street style worn by "influencers." The course also explores the industry from a global perspective, challenging standard of classical narratives about fashion and decolonizing our understandings of the industry, to think about the different ways in which fashion has emerged, developed, and is engaged with and around the world. 

This course is intended for undergraduate students in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences who have some background knowledge in Neurobiology and Behavioral science. This class covers the basics of cognitive neuroscience. Cognitive Neuroscience is a subfield of neuroscience that examines behavioral and neurobiological foundations underlying cognitive functions including perception, movement, attention, learning and memory, emotion, language, decision-making, and social cognition.  

Students will explore the methodology of cognitive neuroscience and its applications to investigation of human behavior and decision. The course focuses on 8 major functions of the brain: Perception, Movement, Attention, Emotion, Memory, Executive functions, Decision-making, Social cognition. Students are expected to actively participate in questions and answers, debates, and discussions during class. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. This course explores market design, auctions, negotiation strategies, and behavioral economics with a focus on real-world applications and practical experiments. Students gain insights into how markets function, learn negotiation techniques, and analyze human behavior in economic decision-making through hands-on experiments and class discussions. At the course completion, they are able to confront real-world business challenges with confidence and insight, armed with a robust skill set that combines theory, practice, and the science of human behavior.

Students learn about different auction types, their theoretical foundations, and practical implementations. Negotiations, another crucial component of market interactions, involve discussions to reach mutually acceptable agreements. The course covers various negotiation techniques and strategies to improve outcomes. Understanding market design, auctions, and negotiations is crucial for ensuring efficient and fair resource allocation, making strategic business decisions, and developing effective negotiation skills. Behavioral economics provides insights into human decision-making, helping to predict and influence behavior in market settings. This knowledge is vital for professionals in business and economics, policymakers, and individuals aiming to improve their negotiation skills and influence market dynamics. By the end of the course, students possess a robust skill set combining theory, practical applications, and behavioral insights, enabling them to confidently tackle real-world business challenges.

Topics covered in the lessons include: market design, auction theory, applications of auction theory, negotiation and bargaining, behavioral economics, cognitive biases and heuristics, behavioral economics in market design, real world applications and case studies. Prerequisite Knowledge: To successfully complete this course, students should have a foundational understanding of microeconomics, including concepts such as supply and demand, market equilibrium, and basic game theory. Prior coursework in introductory economics or business studies will help in grasping the more advanced topics covered in market design, auctions, and negotiation strategies. Additionally, an interest in behavioral economics and a willingness to engage in hands-on experiments and class discussions will enhance the learning experience.

This colloquium prepares students for writing their bachelor’s thesis by guiding them through research design, literature review, theory development, and academic writing. Students learn to formulate strong research questions, identify research gaps, and structure their projects effectively. Through discussions, workshops, and peer feedback, the course builds essential research and analytical skills for successful independent thesis work.

This course covers human-computer interaction (HCI) design methods and principles. Human-computer interaction deals with the design of interactive systems to support the ways people communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives. The central goal of HCI is to develop usable systems that are easy to learn, effective to use, and offer an enjoyable experience. 

In this course, students explore well-known design principles on usability aspects (e.g., learnability, efficiency, human errors) and design methodologies (e.g., user-centered design, task analysis, prototyping, heuristic evaluation, and user testing). Design assignments and term projects help students enhance their user interface design skills in web, mobile, and IoT environments.  

This course introduces feminist perspectives into established aesthetics by illuminating the systematic elimination of sex, sexuality, and the body from conceptual frameworks such as beauty, the sublime, pleasure, and reason. At the same time, the course analyzes and critiques artwork and practices from feminist perspectives, examining art produced or performed by women. 

The main concepts of modern aesthetics, such as 'beauty', 'hobbies', 'art', and 'genius', were surprisingly not evenly distributed to everyone. In other words, they were ideological, sometimes very gendered. As a result, there were people who questioned these aesthetic concepts, and these questions provided a place for a new view of new art. In this lecture, starting from the question of the gender ideologies hidden by the basic concepts of aesthetics, we examine the novelty opened up by feminist aesthetics with a focus on contemporary art, and furthermore, we will glimpse the future imagined by feminists' posthuman-centered thinking. 

Topics include body and mind, subject and object, the debate of nude representation, beauty and the sublime, theory of genius and romanticism, gender in modern aesthetics, art as other, woman as other, modernism, rethinking body, abject body, queering body and performativity, anti-human, non-human, and posthuman, and more. 

This course provides students with an overall view on the state of the earth's ecosystems, their health and biodiversity, as well as the problems resulting from anthropogenic impacts. Furthermore, the student acquires notions about the conservation methods of ecosystem health. The course contents focuses on the following aspects:

• Brief history of the conservation of ecosystem diversity.
• Distribution and diversity of global ecosystems. Spatial and temporal gradients of ecosystems. Importance of biodiversity for the functioning of ecosystems, ecosystem functions, processes, and global health.
• Threats to Earth’s ecosystem diversity, mass extinctions, and global changes.
• Processes of overexploitation, degradation, and contamination of ecosystems.
• Conservation methods of ecosystems. Social, economic, and political elements for ecosystem conservation.
• National and international strategies and case studies, protected areas, ecological corridors, rewilding, and other approaches to conserve ecosystem health.
• Outline of modern technologies in support of ecosystem conservation.
• Examples of success practices in ecosystem conservation.

This course covers economic development in various regions of the world and introduces students to major development problems and policies, both domestic and international. Students explore and analyze models of economic growth, population growth, poverty, income distribution, urbanization and rural-urban migration, health, education, the environment, and international trade and finance, problems of debt burdens, foreign aid, and private and foreign investment. Topics include Economic Growth and Development, Growth Models, Poverty, Income Inequality and Development, Population Growth and Economic Development: Causes, Consequences, and Controversies, Rural and Urban Migration: Theory and Policy, Human Capital and Economic Development, Agricultural Transformation and Rural Development, The Environment and Development, Trade and Economic Development, The Policy Debate: Export Promotion, Import Substitution, and Economic Integration, Balance of Payments, Developing-Country Debt, and Macroeconomic Stabilization Controversy, Foreign Finance, Investment, and Aid: Controversies and Opportunities, and Finance and Fiscal Policy for Development.  

Prerequisite: Introductory economics 

Persistent gender and other inequalities in education, employment, income and other resources, including technology use, continue to deter adults and children from attaining their full potential in many parts of the world. Although there is some progress in addressing inequalities across the world, rapidly increasing access to digital devices and platforms in many parts of the world poses new challenges. This course addresses three interrelated questions about the drivers of digital inequality, how they are patterned across gender, racial, and ethnic identities as well as how they intersect with other forms of social inequalities. A strong emphasis is also placed on novel strategies for tracking and confronting these inequalities to attain a more just and equitable society for all.

This course studies factors that drive entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial process. The course starts by exploring the process dynamics of entrepreneurial activity.  Then explores the origins of entrepreneurial opportunity, reviewing how entrepreneurs screen and develop the opportunities that they discover, and unravel how entrepreneurs seek to appropriate the returns from their enterprising behavior and benefit from or contribute to entrepreneurial networks and ecosystems. Focus is placed on new venture gestation: the initial stages of the process that may result in a new company to emerge. Throughout the course, explore how entrepreneurs not only rely on generic business management principles, but also how they cope with the uncertainty, risk, scarcity of time, capital and other resources that is inherent to all entrepreneurial venturing. Prerequisites SSC1005 Introduction to Psychology or SSC1029 Sociological Perspectives or SSC1027 Principles of Economics or a first-year undergraduate business course.