English

The course expands creative practice and challenges conventional boundaries through the development of interactive projects. It engages with contemporary art and design practices to craft audio-visual installations, explores the rise of interactivity in gaming and virtual reality, and creates projects that blend several media formats into immersive experiences. It reflects on the concept of (im)possible spaces (environments that challenge the notions of spaces and places within virtual worlds) and experiments with techniques such as animation and incorporation (e.g., creating avatars with integrated VFX/SFX). Using professionally recognized game engines and hardware (VR headsets, motion capture suits), the course teaches interactive experience design requiring minimal programming skills.

This course explores the relationship between language, society, and culture from a sociolinguistic and intercultural perspective. It identifies how social, historical, and cultural factors influence language use and variation, as well as the processes of language contact. This course addresses the impact of intercultural communication on identity, social interaction, and the construction of meanings. It begins with a brief history and the fundamental concepts of sociolinguistics and then moves to the types of variation in sociolinguistics. Next, it concentrates on the relationship between language and attitude and then that of language and culture. This course examines culture and intercultural communication and finishes by discussing the future of English as a global language.  

This course examines financial literacy, with an emphasis on practical financial analysis skills and proficient use of Microsoft Excel for financial modelling. It covers key financial concepts essential for business professionals, such as the time value of money, personal financial management, financing choices for investments, investment performance, and portfolio analysis. Students gain exposure to emerging trends in the field, such as fintech and sustainable investing, ensuring that they stay up-to-date with the latest developments in finance.

This course provides a basic understanding of and an integrated view of current landscape of risk analysis. It covers risk analysis; health impact assessment; environmental health and safety; policy making, and evaluation processes. The course mainly deals with selected applications of epidemiological methods and findings to public health issues.

This course examines the history, characteristics and fundamental principles of International Refugee Law which deals with refugees and displaced persons through the traditional legal as well as political approach. It also focuses on solutions and current debates concerning forced migration issues around the globe, especially in Japan and Korea.

The seminar investigates the connections between the concepts of memory, the monument, film, and the archive through studying contemporary films and artistic interventions from Germany and the United States. Engaging approaches from art history, film and media studies, and memory studies, the seminar’s investigations are two-pronged: First, the course takes advantage of its location in Berlin’s historic center to explore how artists and activists have negotiated Germany’s histories of colonialism and Afro-German histories in urban spaces and on the HU campus. Second, students investigate how artists and filmmakers have translated the complexities of such memory work onto the screen. The seminar thus covers topics including monuments and memorialization, American and European legacies of slavery, the essay film as archive, film representations of the restitution of looted artworks, and the “restitution” of colonial images. The course studies recent films by filmmakers including Mati Diop, Jürgen Ellinghaus, Martina Priessner, and Marcin Wierzchowski.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. At the end of the course, students:

• Understand the evolution and current state of BHR in international law.
• Assess the scope of States' obligations with respect to corporate activities.
• Explore the nature of corporate responsibility with respect to human rights and environmental standards.
• Evaluate corporate strategies for human rights due diligence.
• Develop skills to implement BHR frameworks in corporate governance.

The course content is divided into 9 parts:

I. Introduction to Business and Human Rights

II. The International Normative Framework: Framing State Obligations, Unfolding the Status of Companies in International Law

III. International Law Efforts to Regulate Corporate Activities

IV. The Role of Multi-Stakeholders Initiatives

V. State Obligations to Regulate Corporate Activities

VI. Corporate Rights Due Diligence (HRDD)

VII. Business, Human Rights and Climate Change

VIII. Business and Human Rights in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

IX. Companies Operating in Conflict-Affected Areas

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. Students acquire knowledge of Coordination Chemistry and are familiar with common theories concerning metal ligand bond, the synthesis and properties of coordination compounds, including most simple organometallic compounds. At the end of the course, students are able to relate the nature of the different metal-ligand combinations with the properties of the complexes and their possible use in different application fields including: catalysis, functional materials, bioinorganic and supramolecular chemistry.

Course contents: 

I. The inorganic elements in the periodic table (6 hours)

Non-metals, metalloids and metals in the periodic table: electron configuration, characteristics, bonding, reactivity.

II. Coordination complexes and the metal-ligand bonding (8 hours)

a) General aspects. Metal ions: electron configuration, the d sub-shell in transition metals, the f sub-shell in lanthanides. Ligands: definition, the Lewis acid/base model. Multidentate ligands and chelates. Geometry. Nomenclature.

b) The metal-ligand bonding. The molecular orbital model: octahedral and tetrahedral complexes. Sigma/pi-donor, pi-acceptor ligands. Link with the crystal field theory: high spin/low spin complexes.

III. Spectroscopic investigation of transition metal complexes (12 hours)

a) UV-visible spectroscopy: spectral terms, Orgel diagrams, Tanabe-Sugano diagrams, intervalence charge transfer.

b) Mid-infrared and near infrared spectroscopies: application to carbonyl and cyano complexes, and to organic ligands.

c) Emission spectroscopy: basics, the Jablonski diagram, definition of quantum yield and emission lifetime. Luminescence from organic compounds and heavy-metal complexes and lanthanides.

IV. Reactivity of metal complexes: (18 hours)

a) Contributions to the stabilization energy of complexes: electrostatic interaction, crystal field stabilization energy, the HSAB model. Influence of the size and charge of the metal ion. S-p metals vs. transition metals : comparison.

b) Ligands substitution: inert/labile complexes, link with the crystal field theory, the trans effect.

c) Reactivity in organometallic chemistry: the 18-electron rule, oxidative addition, reductive elimination. Application to homogeneous catalysis

d) Excited states as new chemical species: different energy, lifetime, geometry, dipole moment. The case of [Ru(bpy)3]2+.Application to artificial photosynthesis and solar light harvesting

e).Luminescent metal complexes and lanthanide-based compounds: fundamentals and application to materials (light emitting devices) and life science (bioimaging and biosensing).

f) Photocatalytic processes mediated by transition metal complexes.

This course provides an overview of the European Union (history, institutions, and evolution) and discusses the EU on the global stage including geopolitical challenges, politics, and strategic autonomy. It delves into the EU migration and asylum policy as well as the digital future of Europe. This course discusses industry and defense and how they shape an industrial policy for Europe's security. Lastly, it explores the EU climate policy, its implementation, and challenges.

This course consists of two parts. The first part of the course aims to provide students with a survey of fundamentals in international economics, in both theory and empirics. Topics include essential theories of international trade and empirical evidence. Through the course, you will have a better understanding about why countries trade, what they trade, the benefits and costs of trade, and the motivations for and the effects of government trade policies. The second part of the course develops a theoretical framework for the analysis of the determinants of international capital movements, trade imbalances, and nominal and real exchange rates. The theoretical framework is then used as the basis for the discussion of policy issues such as the emergence of the U.S. as the largest foreign debtor, global trade imbalances, developing-country debt crises, the European financial crisis, exchange-rate-based inflation stabilization, currency unions, debt default, balance-of-payment crises, and the effect of the great recession of 2008 on the world economy.