English

This course examines the application of economics to the analysis of policy issues facing governments in Australia and overseas. It begins with a general introduction on the application of principles of microeconomics for guiding the formulation of policy options and their interpretation. It then explores in detail specific topics drawn from health economics, microeconomic reform, income distribution, poverty or other relevant policy areas. For each specific topic the subject presents and evaluates results in the literature and analyses future policy options and their effects.

This course examines the nature of crime in Australia and the different approaches to understanding criminal behavior. The course seeks to ground students with an understanding of the causes of crime, the major methods for measuring crime, as well as the dominant theoretical perspectives in the field of Criminology.

Health and disease are shaped by social, cultural, political, and technological forces and inextricably linked with questions of science, technology, modernity, religion, colonialism, capitalism, racism, globalization, humanitarianism, and the state. This course focuses on recent developments towards the pharmaceuticalization of health, the molecularization of life, the commodification of the body, the privatization of medical care, and the securitization of public health. These developments have fundamentally transformed today's landscape of therapeutic governance in fundamental ways.

This course is a freshmen seminar, aiming to equip students with basic knowledge of the unique research and development methodologies, application scenarios, and hands-on practices of large language models (LLMs). The topics covered in the course include the using LLM for in-context learning, end-to-end application development using LLMs, fine- tuning, data management for AI, and development tools and services for large language models. The course consists of lectures and a significant amount of programming labs. Under the guidance of teaching assistants, students will complete several independent mini-experiments and team up to design a real-world LLM-based application. In this course, students will:

1) Learn how to use LLM for in-context learning with modern open-source frameworks; 2) Understand the fine-tuning methods of large language models, the usage of distributed training systems, and metrics to evaluate the quality of LLMs;
3) Learn the end-to-end practical development methods of LLM applications by designing and developing a non-trivial LLM application project;

4) Know the latest application scenarios of large language models and cutting-edge research problems in LLM;
5) Learn practical skills to work on a shared cloud computing environment;
6) Improve their team collaboration skills and project presentation skills.

This course offers students a grounding in the language of modern machine learning, with a focus on particular topics in linear algebra, differential calculus, probability, and statistics. Rather than focusing on theorems and their proofs, the course covers the key tools (and theorems) within the topic areas, and to illustrate these with exemplars drawn from machine learning. The course is delivered through a mixture of lectures and classes, and involves a mix of traditional lecture delivery, interactive notebooks, and problem sets.

This course introduces students to the broad range of current research on autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Students learn about advantages and disadvantages of current definitions of ASD and diagnostic techniques; critically assess current psychological/cognitive theories of ASD; assess current neural theories of ASD; study potential causes of ASD; and explore the social and scientific importance of ASD.

Science and technology (S&T) permeate everyday international exchange and increasingly drive change in international relations in complex ways. The criticality of competition in S&T at all levels of international interactions warrants systematic study from social science perspectives. This graduate seminar studies key aspects in S&T affecting the broad notion of International Political Economy, with China being an actor and factor, in the contemporary world. The substantive focus of this course is on how S&T manifests in diplomacy, international laws and norms, economic growth, trade, sustainable development and geopolitical risk assessments. The course invites students to appreciate and analyze these complexities through situating the role of S&T in examples include environment, health, manufacturing technology, energy, and AI. The course draws heavily on recent research to showcase how social scientists and policy-makers have evaluated and navigated debates over the interplay between S&T and international relations.

Prior knowledge about a particular topic covered in the syllabus is not required. The course will introduce basic concepts required for understanding the issues covered. The load of required readings is deliberately kept low to incentivize comprehension and questioning before the class meeting so that students from diverse backgrounds can have as much of a common plate to relate with each other during class.

Upon completing the course, participants can expect to have enriched knowledge base and appreciation for the scientific and technological dimensions of the broader issues they are interested in. The main objective is to enable students to produce research on current topics by practicing critical thinking.

This course examines environmental change as a problem of governance. It scrutinizes major governance dimensions - such as actors, institutions, and problem structures - at multiple levels and across domains. This includes the interplay of government, market, and civil society in efforts to mitigate and adapt to environmental change. The course critically approaches the changing institutional architecture of environmental governance, including the rise of alternative forms of governance beyond the state. Actors like regions, cities, international organizations, businesses, non-governmental organizations, and social movements are studied. Cases of environmental governance on various levels are contrasted and compared, together with overlaps between environmental issues and other domains like trade and security. The course allows reflecting on these cases in relation to central political scientific concepts like democracy, justice, legitimacy, and effectiveness.

This course examines the relationship between philosophy and religion from the perspective of different philosophical and religious traditions. Topics include: the nature of ultimate reality, arguments for and against the existence God or gods, competing philosophical and religious accounts of life after death, religious pluralism and God or gods, competing philosophical and religious accounts of life after death, religious pluralism and diversity.