English

This course examines theory and research of individual social behavior; social motivation; attitudes; group interaction; socialization; prejudice.

This course introduces one of sociology's sister disciplines, social anthropology, which is also referred to as cultural anthropology or ethnology. This course has a theoretical and an applied dimension. In the theoretical portion it introduces classical and modern examples of anthropological theory ranging from B. Malinoswki and C. Levi-Strauss to C. Geertz and J. Diamond. The applied portion uses a variety of examples and field studies ranging from geographically closer regions such as Northern Ireland, the Basque country, and South Tyrol, to more "exotic" regions and examples.

This course introduces key economic principles such as trade-offs, opportunity cost, supply and demand, and market structures. Students learn how markets function, how government policies influence economic outcomes, and how macroeconomic indicators like national income and trade shape the global economy. Emphasis is placed on applying economic reasoning to real-world issues and thinking critically about the limits of economic models.

This course presents the cellular basis of plant growth and development for undergraduate students in the major of Horticultural Science and Biotechnology. The course provides students with an up-to-date understanding of the plant cell cycle, cell enlargement and cell differentiation processes, which is fundamental for improving plant growth and the production of special plant products. Thorough descriptions on the plant cellular compartments, cell division, dynamic growth and specialization are presented alongside the principles of advanced molecular techniques in genetics and visualization of the plant cell. 

Topics include Molecules and membranes, Nucleus, Protein sorting and transport, Cytoskeleton and cell movement, Plasma membrane, Cell wall, Cell cycle and cytokinesis, Regulation, Stem cells and meristems, Cell differentiation, Cell death.  

This course explores the ambiguous connections between population dynamics and climate change. After a lecture-based acquisition of basic knowledge in the field of demography, the course studies the link between climate change and population dynamics in an interactive way by discussing scientific articles. It discusses which demographic dynamics linked to fertility, mortality, and migration impact environmental changes. Hereby, the course considers questions such as how far climate change can be explained by population growth; whether demographic pressure helps adapting more quickly to climate change; and which regions are the most responsible for climate change, in economic and demographic terms. A particular focus is determining which populations are most vulnerable to climate change and environmental degradation. Based on this fundamental knowledge, it discusses possible actions to dramatically reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and further deterioration of the environment as well as to protect the most exposed and vulnerable populations. It tackles climate-change related education, access to reproductive health care and family planning, gender equality in education and economic participation, investments in public health care services and technical improvements. This allow students to answer questions about what policies should be recommended to alleviate climate change, in the light of population growth and population aging, and which best-practice examples exist that help mitigating the effects of climate change for the most vulnerable.

At a time when liberal democracies are weakened by ideological polarization and the rise of populist movements challenging institutional checks and balances as well as the foundations of rational debate (Trumpism, the Bolsonaro episode, the AfD, etc.), it is becoming vital for future political, administrative, and academic leaders—who are often unfamiliar with scientific fundamentals, particularly in statistics—to acquire a basic grasp of such tools in order to define a framework for contributing to informed debate and evidence-based decision-making. This course provides them with that foundation through the lens of mathematical modeling. Concretely, it offers a rigorous methodology and a practical introduction to statistical modeling, taught through its logical application in structuring arguments and fostering debate. The objective is to equip students with practical tools that will allow them to analyze, interpret, and critically assess the use of data in their future professional environments, whether in strategy, economics, consulting, or public affairs management. With the help of AI-assisted applications, students learn to build, and interpret simple economic models, while developing a critical stance on the limitations and biases inherent in these models. The econometric article by Daron Acemoglu, recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize, serves as one of the course's central threads, alongside more operational examples drawn from the corporate world and public sector. Through these applications, the course also offers students keys to understanding the mathematical foundations behind how artificial intelligence operates. The overarching ambition of this course is to enable students to become autonomous, clear-sighted, and critical actors in the use of data—capable of shaping the framework of public debate and decision-making at a time when perceptions of reality are increasingly influenced and polarized by the subjective interpretations of both populist opinion leaders and the prophets of artificial intelligence and big data.

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 provides students with the advanced knowledge of the mechanisms underlying perception and multisensory integration. Students are able to understand the perceptual and behavioral consequences of multisensory integration and the key determinants of these intersensory bindings: the role of attention on cross-modal perception and multisensory integration; the multisensory brain's representation of the body and of peri-personal space and the cortical plasticity across sensory modalities and the effects of sensory deprivation.

The course describes and evaluates the results of recent research on multisensory integration. First, the mechanisms underlying multisensory integration are outlined. It then examines the perception of multisensory events, the advantages afforded by the ability to combine different sensory modalities and the key determinants of intersensory interactions. Another key question addressed is how multisensory interactions are linked to and modulated by attention, specifically considering the latest evidence assessing the role of exogenous and endogenous attentional mechanisms on cross-modal processes. In addition, there is a focus on recent research concerning how multisensory information is used to create multiple spatial representations of our body parts and of the spaces within which they can act. We see how these representations that are used to guide body movements through space show a considerable degree of plasticity. Finally, we consider how the cortical system for perception may become radically reorganized after sensory deprivation and evaluate this surprising degree of cross-modal plasticity.

Public Crisis Management is an undergraduate course in Public Administrative. Specifically, it is divided into three parts: the first part is the types and causes of sudden public events, the second part is crisis and crisis management theory, and the third part is the specific process and techniques of crisis management.

This course examines capital budgeting techniques, the capital structure decision, the distribution decision and corporate risk management at an advanced level. Topics include: the Modigliani-Miller theorems, the impact of taxes under a classical tax system, the impact of taxes under an imputation tax system, corporate acquisitions and restructuring, hybrid securities as a source of finance, techniques in raising capital.