English

This course introduces students to the range and scope of social policy analysis by showing how the subject has developed over time. It covers the history and development of Irish social policy and examines how social change has influenced and has been influenced by social policy developments since the nineteenth century.

Using direct engagement with Late Antiquity and medieval artworks housed in Berlin’s Staatliche Museen, this seminar introduces students to a solid method of interrogating images and objects. It focuses on the particularities of the Christian image, namely its capacity of figuring the invisible and its relationship with the Hebrew Scriptures. The way the Hebrew Scriptures were transformed into the “Old Testament” in images serves as the seminar’s guiding thread. By examining specific distinct objects, students trace the emergence of Christian imagery, explore the contradictions it struggled with, and consider the dynamics of artistic creation in the Middle Ages. The first sessions offer a brief introduction to the central themes. In the following sessions, students visit the Bode Museum and other state museums. During these sessions, each student presents an assigned object, followed by an open group discussion. The class also addresses questions regarding the ways of exhibiting medieval objects in museums.

This course covers the transformation of politics in the era of the internet, digital technologies and changes of methodological and conceptual terrain in the studies of politics, and relationship between politics and digital technologies. It helps students understand the role of communications media and mediation in public affairs and the manner in which digital technologies have reworked the political domain. 

This course surveys Korean history from antiquity to the present, tracing the evolution of politics, society, and culture on the peninsula. The course begins with Old Joseon and the Three Kingdoms, examining early state formation, before turning to the Goryo dynasty and the establishment of Joseon. We highlight the structures of Joseon society, cultural achievements, and Korea’s place within the East Asian world, including encounters with Ming China and Japan during the Imjin War. In the modern era, we explore the Daehan Empire, the colonial period under Japanese rule, and the profound transformations that followed liberation and the Korean War. The course then examines the divergent paths of North and South Korea, with particular focus on South Korea’s rapid industrialization, the rise of chaebol, and the movement toward democratization. 

This course examines entrepreneurial and private equity finance.  It covers financial issues encountered by entrepreneurs and those active on the investing side of entrepreneurship, such as working for banks, venture capital firms, or corporate venture organizations, or anyone interacting with entrepreneurs and private equity investors.

This course covers comparative studies of social policy components and administration in ASEAN member countries and Western states, covering topics including social expenditures, theories and approaches to welfare provision and management, effectiveness of the welfare states, education, public health, housing, employment, taxation, social capital, civil society, social security, and social or welfare rights as well as social, economic, and political considerations that shape the welfare state.

This course covers basic data representations, algorithms, and applications for interactive visualization. The class mainly focuses on computer graphics and spatial data visualization. 

Topics include Graphics systems, OpenGL basics, Transformations, Data acquisition, Data representation, Viewing, Lighting and shading, Shaders, Color models, Textures, Volume rendering, Surface visualization, Geometric processing, Image visualization, Advanced topics in visualization. 

This course covers the essence of quantum computing and various quantum machine learning techniques. Quantum computing has the potential to outperform classical computing and to solve problems that were believed to be intractable otherwise. With rapid advances in quantum technology, current technology is expected to be disrupted in many ways. Quantum computing opens up tremendous opportunities for data science in the big data era where computational power is of critical importance.  

This course equips students with theoretical backgrounds to be able to apply the principles of quantum computing in solving various challenges of modern data science problems. Topics include Introduction to quantum data science & quantum machine learning, Machine learning basics & classical information, Quantum mechanics & quantum information, Circuit model of quantum computation & reversible computing, Black-box model of computation & related quantum algorithms, Quantum phase estimation & Quantum Fourier transform, Unstructured search & quantum amplitude estimation, Quantum linear systems solver & quantum support vector machine, Quantum kernel method, and Quantum neural network. 

Prerequisites: Linear algebra, calculus, probability theory and statistics, Quantum mechanics, Python or Matlab (or similar programming skills) 

This course explores ideas and representations of race, gender and enslavement in 18th and 19th century British Caribbean and the wider Atlantic world. Focusing on questions of colonial connection, representation, identity, creolization, resistance, and power, the course engages primary and secondary materials in order to analyze and critically interpret the ways in which those who were enslaved related to, and resisted, the oppressive systems under which they were forced to labor, as well as the convictions and actions of enslavers and anti-slavery campaigners.

This course explores accounts centering on the movement and displacement of people in the French, German, and Spanish-speaking worlds. Beginning with an introductory guide to studying culture(s) in a Modern Languages' context, it then focus on experiences resulting from movement or displacement, whether forced or voluntary, and engages with themes such as alienation, belonging, difference, borders, and otherness. Its case studies are taken from a variety of media (including literature and film) and are considered in terms of their specific local and national relevance as well as their transnational implications. The course offers diverse perspectives on the issues arising from cultural encounters occasioned by, for example, diaspora, exile, migration, urbanization and colonialism.