English

This course examines the rise of human rights discourse and its relationship to other discourses on suffering and social justice. It focuses on the experience of victims of human rights abuse and the politics of meaning. Students will engage in critiques of law as a reductionist discourse on the social by exploring the relationships between human rights and cultural differences such as gender, ethnicity, religion and indigenous cultures. The embodied self, social interdependency and the architecture of social institutions are the backdrop through which the course explores the tensions between universal and relativist understandings of human rights and their realization. Students will be introduced to the fundamentals of human rights, the global human rights machinery, and the ethics of humanitarian intervention, and will consider how sociologists have studied and written about human rights.

This course introduces the study of meaning. With the rapid rise in practical applications of artificial intelligence systems, it is now more crucial than ever for us to define what it means to be human, and there is nothing more humanistic than studying the concept of meaning itself. 

Students engage with some of the most influential scientific, literary, and philosophical texts that have shaped the world today with the objective to move beyond a passive understanding. Students are challenged to think critically and actively about how the ideas put forth in these texts have come to be rejected, revised, and/or replaced, and how this very process of the shifting dominant narrative of meaning (i.e., not just the works by themselves in isolation) continues to influence the society and culture that they currently live in. 

Topics include Writing systems, Rhetoric, Similes, metaphors, and meaning, Creating new knowledge via logic, What is knowledge, Are signs arbitrary, Meaning as behavior, Language and thought Sarcasm, Mathematical meaning (axiomatic system), Mathematical meaning (axiomatic system), Can computers and AI understand meaning, Society and language use, How might aliens define meaning. 

This course introduces students to the field of information management with particular emphasis on the management of information within organizations. Students are provided with opportunities to explore the basic concepts and principles of information management as well as apply these concepts and principles to practical problems. Advanced topics are also introduced throughout the course to foster greater depth of understanding, to challenge students to think about established issues in new ways, and to highlight gaps in our current understanding. Some appreciation is also fostered for the limitations of empirical research and for the unique challenges associated with the management of information. The course discusses themes that are directly relevant to producing information management professionals. Some of these topics are measuring the impact of IT on business performance; IT consumerization; Big Data: the role of business intelligence and business analytics; IT governance; and information security. All of these topics are on the top of the agenda of an information manager, and practitioners are constantly looking for methods to better address these issues. For non-IM specialists, a discussion of these topics helps to understand the most relevant problems that are part of using IT in organizations. Given the widespread use of IT, managers who are active outside the field of IT also deal with many of these same problems on a regular basis. The discussion of each topic focuses on methods and tools that are being used by practitioners to deal with these issues. For most topics, additional readings are available to provide background knowledge for students who lack the relevant prior knowledge.

This course covers the tools and systems used to implement cloud computing systems, and presents key issues to be addressed, such as virtualization. Students learn cloud system platform technologies and detailed component technologies then configure servers and perform programming on public clouds like Amazon Cloud System (AWS) or Google Cloud System. 

Topics include Cloud computing concepts, Cloud computing models, Cloud computing architecture, Cloud computing platforms, Virtualization, Synchronization, Coordination, Distributed deadlock. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The purpose of the course is to provide students with a background in science to the methods and policy tools used in environmental and resource economics in order to achieve efficient management of pollution and environmental resources. More specifically, the course will introduce the concept of environmental externalities as the main source of environmental degradation, and the policy instruments used to correct these externalities. The course also includes an introduction to climate change economics and climate policy. Student having successfully completed the course are expected have a good understanding of issues and economic policies related to controlling environmental pollution and climate change. The course covers the two main approaches to the economics of the environment and natural resources - Environmental economics and Ecological economics - with a special focus on the Economics of climate change. 

The institutional church never had the kind of control over the populace of medieval Europe that modern people think it did. This course explores the multiplicity of types of belief and practice amongst those who lived in accordance with the church’s teaching—monks and nuns, wandering preachers, pious families—and the varieties of resistance among those who did not—Jews, Muslims, and heretics, social revolutionaries, sexual nonconformists, practitioners of the occult, student wastrels. The course discusses the kinds of sources that tell us about these groups, including saints’ lives, chronicles, Inquisition registers, letters, and poetry. This course helps students appreciate how people in the past operated much as people do today, but in a very different world with a different set of assumptions. Continuous emphasis is placed on the geographical and cultural diversity of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, and the decentralized and multivocal nature of medieval religion.

This course develops foundational writing skills in Irish by engaging with short texts based on themes aligned with the A1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Writing practice is supported by analysis of Irish syntax using both original work and selected examples from other sources. Reading skills are strengthened through short passages accompanied by comprehension tasks. The course also encourages reflection on personal learning processes, with attention to the use of learning strategies, common challenges, and effective approaches for addressing them through guided class discussion.

This course begins with Japan’s early history then focuses on the different stages of modernization, extending into the twenty-first century. Following a chronological sequence, the thematic design introduces students to different aspects of Japan, including the “myth” of the country, and its multifarious relations with East Asia, the West, and the world. Japan serves as a non-Western case to understand (post-)modern world history.  

This course examines policy and decision making for conserving biodiversity in an uncertain world using a combination of ecological data and decision science. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. As a result of this course, students will know and understand the fundamentals of the virtual prototyping through the systematic approach to a complete DMU (Digital Mockup) that from the design concept leads to the engineering of a vehicle (car or motorcycle). Students will learn to work independently and apply multidisciplinary knowledge to the virtual design and optimization of systems and components in vehicle engineering. The students learn the most advanced techniques of interaction between real and virtual prototype through the principles of human-machine interaction. Students develop the ability to work within a workgroup, planning and managing the activities needed to achieve technically valid project results.

This course provides the skills and knowledge for the development of an innovative concept for new motorcycles and/or scooters. To achieve these objectives, the program includes the following activities: Definition of project objectives through Market Analysis and Competitor Analysis; Definition of Technical Specifications; Setting up the Product Architecture; Morphological matrix for the selection of integrated innovative solutions; Setting up the layout of the new motorcycle/scooter; 3D construction of the Digital Mock-up of the new motorcycle/scooter; Introduction to Aesthetics-Oriented Design; Definition of the new motorcycle vehicle concepts; Virtual and physical prototyping of the concepts.

The following prerequisites are required to participate in the course: Advanced knowledge of 2D CAD software, advanced knowledge of 3D CAD software for solid modeling, and advanced knowledge of 3D CAD (CAS) software for surface modeling. Please note that during the course, no class hours are dedicated to teaching 2D or 3D modeling software, which, as stated above, must be considered prerequisites.