English

This course examines the role of branding strategy in marketing and provides insight into how different branding approaches can be executed to achieve strategic outcomes. Topics include brand management, customer-based brand equity and positioning, brand resonance and the brand value chain, and the selection of brand elements. The course also covers designing marketing programs and integrated communications to build brand equity, branding in the digital era, and developing systems for measuring and managing brand equity. Additional areas include assessing customer mind-set and market performance, implementing brand architecture strategies, launching new products and brand extensions, and managing brands over time and across global markets and segments.

This course focuses on the areas of property law obligations (part of contract law), using primarily a comparative as well as historic perspective. In addition, the course explores the fundamental (human) rights perspective, specifically, but not only, of property rights. A selection of jurisdictions within (The Netherlands, Germany, France, England, Scotland) as well as outside the European Union (United States, South Africa) are explored, as well as the European Union itself. At least one of the following course modules must be completed: [UCSSCLAW11] Law, Society and Justice or [UCSSCLAW12] Introduction to Law

This course introduces fundamental methods and techniques for analyzing both biotic interactions and abiotic conditions in diverse marine ecosystems. Through a combination of laboratory work and field studies, students gain hands-on experience in experimental design, data collection, and analysis. Topics include measurement of abiotic factors, assessment of species interactions and community structure, evaluation of biodiversity and similarity indices, and investigation of behavioral and ecological patterns. The course also explores the effects of human activities on marine environments and examines strategies for ecosystem restoration, rehabilitation, and conservation.

This introductory survey course is an exploration of the enduring philosophical and spiritual traditions of Asia, focusing on key ancient and modern texts that illuminate timeless human concerns. From the ethical teachings of Confucius to the contemplative insights of Buddhism and the flowing harmony of Taoist thought, this course invites students to engage deeply with foundational ideas that have shaped Eastern civilizations. We also consider how these traditions respond to and converse with global philosophical currents, offering a rich comparative perspective. Through close reading and discussion, students gain not only historical and cultural understanding but also personal insight into ways of living wisely in a complex world. 

This course examines the historical and contemporary social determinants of Indigenous wellbeing. Through an exploration of holistic Indigenous health and wellbeing frameworks, students identify a range of successful strategies that facilitate self-determination and transform Indigenous health and wellbeing outcomes. 

The course consists of a part with a practically oriented project assignment and a theoretical part.  Working in groups, choose a service robotics topic to study and present this orally to the other students. The theoretical part is deepened at a literature seminar where scientific articles are discussed. Examples of service robotics topics include different service robotics applications, human-robot interaction, levels of robot autonomy, navigation of mobile robots, SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping), maze-solving algorithms, line-following algorithms, wheeled locomotion, odometry, anthropomorphic robots, robot ethics or a service robotics topics of the students’ own choice. The practical part consists of a project in one or more of the above-mentioned areas which is carried out in groups of usually four students. A functioning service robot is developed by integrating an Arduino controller, servos, sensors and mechanical components produced by for example laser cutting or 3D printing. The project applies knowledge in mechanics, electronics and programming.

This course introduces and engages in contemporary scholarly reflection on critical animal studies, posthumanism, and ecotheology. Students engage with theological perspectives on the definitions of “humanity,” “animality,” and “creatureliness.” They explore a number of theo-ethical topics in this area from animal conservation to food. Recent questions in ecological ethics swirl around “the question of the human” and “the question of the animal.” Theological and ethical concepts that define human beings as unique, with souls created imago dei, in the image of God with dominion over the planet are critiqued as being morally complicit with species decline, animal suffering, and habitat loss. On a planet undergoing the sixth great wave of animal extinction, this critique is no small matter. This course discusses how we understand the human in relation to other nonhuman creatures that occupy the planet. Students consider animal ethics, the blurry lines between wild and domestic, human and nonhuman, living and extinct, veganism and vegetarianism, human and posthuman and ask how these conversations cause us to rethink theological understandings of “creatureliness” and “creation” and “kinship.” The course asks how definitions of what it means to be “human” are already entangled in our theo-ethical and ecological concerns.

This course examines psychological theory, research, and skills training related to sport performance, exercise motivation, and adherence.

This course introduces the fundamental concepts and research directions of comparative government and politics and employs these methods and concepts to examine the political structure of various governments. What is comparative politics? The course then proceeds to explore research methods of comparative politics to build students’ basic abilities to engage in comparative political research. Subsequently, the course examines diverse political systems and structures, including democracies and autocracies, constitutional design, electoral systems, and party systems from a cross-national perspective.  

This lecture course begins with several recent historical and cultural assessments of Europe’s relationship to the orient in the early eighteenth century, together with an overview of the ways in which the popular taste for oriental tales was marginalized by the rise of the novel as the quintessential British literary form. Students examine the vogue of chinoiserie and the rise of sentimentalism and the man of feeling, before turning to an examination of works by British Romantic writers who variously imagine, engage with and negotiate cultures, lands and peoples from the East. Through an analysis of Coleridge’s Eastern fables, Percy Shelley’s evocations of the Indian muse, Byron’s oriental romances, Mary Shelley’s depictions of otherness and De Quincey’s encounter with the Malay, students interrogate the extent to which these tales, romances and musings are reflective of open engagement and productive influence, and to what extent they can be seen as attempts to control and subjugate an otherness.