English

This course is an undergraduate-level seminar on politics of contemporary China. Understanding politics, economy, society, and their complex relations of our neighbor, People’s Republic of China becomes indispensable for everyone no matter what you study and pursue in this globalized era. In this vein, surveying politics of China would be a priority. We try to systematically (not randomly) analyze and understand those objects through applying some theoretical frameworks of political science such as regime type, political institution, participation, contentious politics, clientelism, developmentalism, nationalism, and interactions between domestic and international politics, to them. More specifically, this course aims at (1) understanding basic political history of contemporary China; (2) theoretically and empirically exposing students to major issues and debates in the study of reform-era Chinese politics and helping students understand major characteristics of the Chinese Communist Party regime; (3) In addition to the conventional contents of “Chinese Politics” course, letting students do a “problem-solving” project from creative and multi-disciplinary perspectives of political interactions as well as politics of things; (4) and finally, encouraging students to pursue their own agendas related to contemporary China in further studies in schools and job market (and beyond).

In this course, we shall read five to six European novels from the late 19th century to the late 20th century, by such writers as Dostoevsky, Proust, Woolf, Kafka, and Camus. We shall consider the following questions, among others: What have these authors discovered about the self, for example, about the richness and opacity of the inner life, about self-knowledge and self-deception, about possibilities of redemption through love, art or memory? In what ways do the novels we read reflect upon—or even intimate beforehand—the unfolding of European socio-political life over the course of a crisis-laden century? How do these authors ponder questions of individual responsibility, guilt and conscience, and do they, in their largely post-Christian era, propound any alternative possibilities of transcendence? How does each writer’s art of narrative extend or transform our consciousness of time and space and help us reinterpret personal experience and collective history?

The course covers sufficient statistics, factorization criteria, exponential families, Rao-Blackwells theorem, ancillary statistics, Cramér-Rao's bound, Neyman-Pearson's lemma, permutation test, and connection between hypothesis testing and confidence intervals. Asymptotic methods: maximum likelihood estimation, profile, conditional and penalized likelihood as well as hypothesis testing with likelihood ratio-, Wald- and score-method. Bayesian inference: estimation, hypothesis testing, and confidence interval and the difference compared to frequentist interpretation.

This course examines analytical functions; cauchy-riemann equations; complex mappings; cauchy's integral formulas; morera's, liouville's & rouche's theorems; taylor & laurent series; analytic continuation, residues & applications to integration; and boundary-value problems.

This course is designed to familiarize students with important concepts and theories of international security studies as well as prominent security issues in the contemporary world. The first part of the course introduces the basic analytical concepts and theoretical frameworks as regards direct and indirect use of force in international politics; the second part explores strategic policy during the Cold War and the lessons that scholars have drawn from that historical period; the third part examines several security challenges at the dawn of the 21st century such as nuclear proliferation, terrorism and insurgency, and the security implications of technological change; the last part focuses on the rise of China and international security, with particular attention paid to the relationship between China and the United States, the Taiwan issue, and maritime disputes in East Asia. It is worth noting that the course will not touch upon most non-traditional security issues such as energy security, climate change, food safety, etc.

The key goal of this course is to appreciate different "modes" and "lenses" of urban thinking and their relationship with urban policy practice, and to understand how to source and interpret different types of urban expertise in relation to complex urban challenges.  Whilst cities have in the past years been an exciting locus of experimentation, and the promises of the "smart city" agenda as well as a city gender lens have fast risen to wide popularity in urban research and policy, there remain many areas in which complex urban challenges test our contemporary understanding of the "urban age." The course engages with urban change-makers working across academic research (in UCL and beyond) and public and private sector institutions. 

This course aims to help students acquire the basic knowledge of the development and functioning of the EU. Additionally, students are expected to analyze the EU’s role in various sectoral policies and its relationships with selected partners.

This course consists of three parts. The first part covers the basics of the EU, including major theories of European integration, its core institutions, decision-making procedures, and legal order. In the second part, this course explores the major bilateral relations between the EU and third parties in the second part. The last part focuses on selected policy areas critical to the EU’s internal stability and external posture. 

This course reviews the basic theory and understanding of the most important molecular genetic methods used in modern ecological and evolutionary research projects. The course is mainly based on practical learning through wet labs (DNA extraction, PCR, DNA sequencing) and computer exercises (editing of DNA sequences that you obtain during the course, phylogeny, and various programs for analysis of DNA sequences) and leads to mastery of different methods used to detect and analyze variation at gene, genome and protein levels within and between individuals, populations, and species. Emphasis is also placed on improving one's ability to assimilate and critically review scientific articles based on molecular genetic data and analyses. The course ends with a research project that is carried out in small groups.

This course is about political, social, cultural, and economic change in the Benelux-countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) from the inter-war period to the present. Among the themes covered are the crisis of democracy in the 1930s; collaboration, resistance and accommodation during the German occupation of World War II; decolonization; Dutch, Belgian, and Luxembourgian post-war politics; the Cold War and European integration; development of the modern welfare state; cultural revolution and new social movements in the 1960s; linguistic and inter-communal tensions and federalization of Belgium; immigration, the polder-model, the "crisis of multiculturalism," and the recent rise of populism in the Netherlands.

This course enables students to understand how money and finance, and processes of global political economy more broadly, enable, shape, and condition the way development, environmental governance, and conservation are practiced in sub-Saharan Africa. The course draws on economic geography, but also social, financial, and cultural geography, anthropology, development studies, and work on society and environment relations. Although the course will have a major reference to sub-Saharan Africa - including Uganda, Kenya, Madagascar, Zimbabwe and South Africa - it also includes examples of financialization, conservation, and eco-system services from the UK, the Caribbean, and Asia.