English

This course examines stochastic processes, including generating functions, branching processes, Markov chains, random walks.

The course provides a thorough and in-depth knowledge of modern experimental particle physics including recent results. It provides an essential basis for students who will undertake research in this subject.

The course focuses on the intersection between business culture and sustainable practices in the European context. It analyzes strategic business frameworks to assess the environmental impact of business activities, highlighting the emerging paradigm of circular economy and economic development. It also discusses cultural differences between European countries exploring the particularities of the regions of the North, the Mediterranean, and the new Eastern Europe. 

This course is also referred to as Culture and Sustainability for Companies in Europe.

This course helps the students to acquire basic knowledge about bank and fintech business models and risks; understand the functioning of contemporary financial technologies and discuss their merits and flaws; evaluate the impact of digitalization and fintech firm entrants on the banking sector.

This course introduces banks and their business models and discusses how trends in financial technologies affect the banking sector. The course combines academic rigour and literature review with practical insights from case studies, e.g., based on financial statements and industry reports. 

First, we will discuss the role of banks in the financial system and why they exist. We briefly introduce the business model of banks and take a closer look at their balance sheets. We focus on the different aspects of how banks are managed and issues relating to banks’ asset and funding structure and then analyse the various risks they are exposed to, their measurement, and how banks manage these risks. 

Second, regarding FinTech and digital disruption in banking, we will develop a conceptual framework that guides us in thinking about innovation in banking and briefly introduce the financial technologies which enable respective innovation and disruption and the policies around them (e.g., Open Banking/PSD2). We then focus on analysing the business model of new fintech firm entrants competing with incumbent banks and how the use of financial technologies enhances banks’ business models. We will cover fintech lending as a complement or substitute to traditional bank lending. Finally, we peruse applications of distributed ledger technology in banking and financial markets, such as blockchains and smart contract based financial protocols, and discuss how they disrupt traditional financial intermediation processes.

This course investigates the economic and political causes and consequences of rising economic inequality. In doing so, it reviews and discusses both classic and recent work that seeks to provide answers to the questions: what is driving dramatic changes in economic inequality, and how does rising economic inequality affect democracy, politics, and political preferences? Specifically, the course discusses how the post-1980 era is different from the one that came before; how economic inequality affects the redistribution of income from the rich to the poor; how it transforms preferences for redistribution and taxation; whether rising inequality is a democratic problem; and whether it increases political inequality and the distribution of political power.

This course examines classic and contemporary theory and research in personality psychology. It covers a variety of perspectives on personality, such as: psychoanalytic, genetic and evolutionary, cultural, biological, humanistic, trait and behavioral. In the laboratory sessions, students will take various personality assessment instruments and participate in experiments to gain first-hand insight into cutting-edge personality research.

In the face of threats of the seventh mass extinction and climate collapse, a planetary emergency has been declared by scientific and intergovernmental bodies. People across global civil society are coming together to respond. This course provides an interdisciplinary perspective on interacting dimensions of key socio-environmental challenges of the 21st century, and responses to them. Considering crises in land, food, water, and biodiversity, students critically analyze the intersections between systems of power and complex environmental processes, and the diverse ways in which people relate to nature and society. 

This course covers two branches of fundamental physics: mechanics and electricity & magnetism. Topics in mechanics include linear motion, circular motion, Newton’s laws of motion, work and energy, conservation of energy, linear momentum, and simple harmonic motion. Topics in electricity & magnetism include electric force, field & potential, current & resistance, DC circuits, electromagnetism and electromagnetic induction.

This course seeks to examine the meaning and significance of “architecture” in one of the most historically marked cities of Europe. Berlin has been subject to many waves of renewal, some gradual, some democratic and some totalitarian. All of these have left their traces on the city’s buildings.

Although we may notice or like the appearance of particular buildings we see everyday or as tourists, their size often makes it seem as though “they have always been there.” Still, these buildings are the result of many individual, social and communal decisions. A building says a lot about the ideas held during the time it was built in. Therefore, the course will include formal and stylistic analysis of the architecture as well as focus on the historical, ideological and individual context of the works through the prism of the following question: What kind of message was this building meant to convey? In this perspective, the course gives a wide overview of the development of public and private architecture in Berlin during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

Following an introduction to the urban, political and cultural development and architectural history of Berlin since the middle ages, the Neo-Classical period will be surveyed with special reference to the works of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. This will be followed by classes on the developments of the German Reich after 1871, which was characterized by both modern and conservative tendencies and the manifold activities during the time of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s such as the Housing Revolution. The architecture of the Nazi period will be examined, followed by the developments in East and West Berlin after the Second World War and the traces of the Berlin wall, which are partly re-enacted. The course concludes with a detailed review of the city’s more recent and current architectural profiles, including an analysis of the conflicts concerning the re-design of Berlin after the Cold War and the German reunification.

Several walking tours to historically significant buildings and sites are included (Unter den Linden, Gendarmenmarkt, Potsdamer Platz, Holocaust Memorial, Humboldt-Forum etc.). The course aims to offer a deeper understanding of the interdependence of Berlin’s architecture and the city’s social and political structures in its historical development. It considers Berlin as a model for the highways and by-ways of a European capital in modern times.

This course examines contemporary geospatial technologies such as web-mapping, GPS and tracking devices (such as your phone), Remote Sensing and GIS. It covers key concepts and principles behind these tools and their use, along with practical experiences through laboratories. Critical and theoretical perspectives on the tools, their use, and their social impacts will be discussed.