English

This course covers American historical and cultural developments from European colonization to the end of the 20th century. It studies both the internal developments in the United States and its growing importance in international politics. It offers a range of social, economic, and political perspectives on the American experience and develops students' understanding of the dominance of the United States in contemporary world history and culture. 

This course examines the sociology of gangs, focusing on the historical development of gangs in New Zealand and the methods which have been taken to control them.

The course introduces computational thinking as applied to problems in science, with special emphasis on their implementation with Python/Python Notebook. A selection of examples illustrate (a) fundamentals of algorithm design in computer programming (b) solution interpretation, as well as (c) analysis of the computational solutions and data visualization using state-of-the-art tools in Python. These cover different types of approaches typically used in scientific computational thinking, including deterministic, probabilistic and approximation methods. The course highlights scientific computational issues such as accuracy and convergence of numerical results.

This course offers a basic and applied overview of research methods, data collection and treatment of educational information, and its analysis and interpretation using specific IT tools to confront the challenges that future education professionals face. The course is focused on challenge-based learning, where students engage in real-world scenarios, to foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

In this course, students look at the interaction between linguistics and the law and more specifically they focus on the face-threatening strategies of deception, manipulation, and aggression. This is a practical course in which students study the ways that linguistics can be applied in non-academic contexts. Students start by examining the role of the linguist as an expert witness in the legal system and in this section they focus on the use of stylistics in investigating disputed authorship, for instance in missing person cases. Students also examine and evaluate research into linguistic markers of deception.

The European Union is an important actor when it comes to law-making. While this often appears to be very abstract, it does impact our lives as European citizens very much, also on the national level. In 2021, the European Commission opened a series of citizen-led debates, the Conference on the Future of Europe. These meetings, taking place in various formats, allowed citizens from all over Europe to share their ideas and provide suggestions on how to improve their future in Europe. This seminar will offer students the opportunity to investigate this process more closely, its results, achievements and implications for all inhabitants of European member states. Connecting them in a better was with EU institutions is crucial considering that European elections will take place in May 2024 and that Eurosceptical voices are rising in many European societies. At the end of the seminar, students will have fostered their background on theoretical perspectives to critically analyze Europeanization, integration and multi-level governance, including institutional, feminist and sociological approaches.

An understanding of physics is critical to address fundamental questions about our world and to innovate next generation technologies. This course presents an overview of the core physics concepts underlying many modern technologies. No prior physics knowledge is required. Students do not need calculus or advanced math for this course, but they should be comfortable, for example, adding fractions, using scientific notation, and with algebraic manipulation. Topics include energy and thermodynamics, gravity and relativity, waves, light, and optics, and quantum mechanics.
 

This course examines tree measurement, stand variables, growth and yield modelling, sampling, forest Inventory, log measurement, surveying and area measurement, mapping and aerial photography, and global positioning systems (GPS) and geographic information systems (GIS).

This course primarily focuses on the identification of financial assets' fair prices. First, the course introduces the main theories of portfolio choice and risk-expected return trade-off in financial markets: the mean-variance portfolio choice, CAPM, APT, Fama-French models. Second, the course introduces the main models and techniques that are used to analyze fixed income securities. Starting from basic concepts such as the yield curve, yield-to-maturity, duration, convexity, the course introduces portfolio hedging strategies based on duration-matching or asset liability management. The course is divided into four parts. First, the course introduces the students to the problem of managing a portfolio. Second, the course introduces the students to the main models and techniques that are used to analyze fixed income securities. Third, the course introduces options pricing. Fourth, the course expose the students to the main behavioral finance findings in the current literature.

This course addresses various topics in management research which encourage creative and logical thinking, structuring of clear arguments, and critical assessment of evidence. The intellectual backbone of the course is applied and empirical economics, including behavioral economics and finance, but wherever appropriate, the course discusses contributions from the psychology, sociology, and management literature. Students mainly deal with issues which are amenable to rigorous empirical investigation. Examples of questions considered are whether pain killers are more effective when they are expensive, whether successful entrepreneurs tend to have been juvenile delinquents, and gender differences in negotiation.