English

This course explores debates around collective intelligence and follow the evolution of the group-mind from past to present and into the future. It looks at how the act of thinking together can go wrong in paranoid conspiracy theories, information bubbles and market panics and how, perhaps, it might be done better.

This course introduces students to social science theories, research, and application related to understanding human behavior in the workplace. This course considers "the people side" of business and management. Topics include personality and performance, managerial decision-making, motivating others, fairness in organizations, the multicultural workplace, power and influence, the adaptive leader, and team leadership.

This course examines critical social science research in Aotearoa New Zealand. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach spanning Indigenous and Feminist studies, political science and sociology, and is organized around the case study of climate change.

This seminar seeks to provide an overview of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. It starts by looking at Schopenhauer’s central work – The World as Will and Representation (1819), touching upon each of the central themes found therein: epistemology, ontology, aesthetics, and ethics. Subsequently, we will partially mirror the themes covered in studying Schopenhauer, this time providing Nietzsche’s take on these. We will approach Nietzsche’s work initially by looking at his On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) – one of his clearest and most systematically argued work. We will find that this not only provides insight on morality but will provide a good foundation for exploring Nietzsche on topics such as art, truth or the will to power. The final part of the seminar will be student driven. Three alternative options have been prepared, covering either A. Nietzsche on Knowledge, Causality and Truth; B. Nietzsche on Art; or C. Nietzsche on Nihilism and The Will to Power. Students will be asked to make a joint decision as to which one of these three topics they will choose for us to cover. This way, in addition to the topic of morality we will be able to cover in some detail Nietzsche’s take on one of the other topics that we explored at the beginning of the seminar from Schopenhauer’s perspective.

In this course, students complete a long-term individual project in order to demonstrate independence and originality, to plan and organize a large project over a long period, and to put into practice knowledge, skills, and research methods. Students are able to submit an original proposal, or browse from projects proposed by prospective supervisors.

Depression is a painful existential situation that seems to be quite widespread in our contemporary capitalist, ultra-individualistic societies. Recent and current interrelated crises, as for example the financial crisis, the climate crisis and the threat of a global war, seem to have exacerbated the phenomenon. But what does it mean exactly to be depressed, or to live with depression? How could we better conceive of it: as mental and bodily disorder, condition, disposition, mode of experience, habit, …? What kind of relations – to oneself, to fellow human beings, and to the world – does depression foster and is fed by? If one agrees to consider it as a pathology, is it just an individual or also a social, collective pathology? What does constitute its ‘pathological’ (i.e. ‘wrong’) character? Does depression also entail ‘positive’ aspects? This course follows various paths for developing a critical philosophy of depression, an undertaking that finds itself, in the current philosophical landscape, at its outset. Note that the preposition “of” has a double meaning: on the one hand, we will study and articulate philosophical, conceptual and also nonconceptual tools for understanding what depression is; on the other hand, we will explore the cognitive (and affective) resources that the depressive experience disclose and unleash, what their epistemological, ethical and political values can be. The seminar aims at addressing and discussing the topic by drawing upon a vast range of theoretical and literary resources, from psychoanalysis to philosophy, from sociology to literature.

This course introduces students, without a background in sport psychology, to the basic concepts needed to understand sport psychology and its application. Topics include Psychological Skills Training, Peak Performance, Performance Profiling, Goal Setting, Performance Review, Motivation, Psychophysiology, Relaxation, Activation, Imagery, Self‐Talk, Concentration, Team Building, and, Competition Routines. The course requires students to take prerequisites.

This course offers an overview of relevant public health approaches to promotion of optimal health and well-being at the population level, particularly for high-risk and vulnerable sub-groups. The course addresses appropriate frameworks for planning nutritional health promotion programs and provides an overview of different policies and programs in play for the development, implementation and evaluation of public health initiatives in the area of nutrition and diets. The complexity and needs to include environmental, sustainable, and behavioral factors in the planning and conduction of interventions in public health nutrition are addressed. The course uses a problem-based learning approach with engaging real-world examples on the approach in developing nutrient supplementation programs, nutrient profile and health claim regulations, school feeding interventions and meal-on-wheels-programs, development and implementation of meaningful healthy and sustainable dietary guidelines, and evaluation and integration of such programs at national and international level.

This course introduces common statistical analysis methods used in psychology and sociology research and teaches students when and how to apply these methods to address their research questions.  Students learn how to select the appropriate statistical analysis methods based on their research questions, perform them using R, and present the results in APA style.
 

This course develops students’ skills in communicating effectively and ethically to promote positive social change. Students will produce communication relating to real-world social issues, where possible in partnership with an external organization working to promote social change. The course also looks at processes for carrying out stakeholder consultation and audience testings