English

This course examines the city in history as represented in fiction in the particular case of Edinburgh, from the historical fiction of Scott, Hogg, and Stevenson to the genre fiction of the last two decades. It examines the construction of the city in these texts as a site of legal, religious, economic, and cultural discourse. The extent to which civic identity both contributes to and competes with national identity is a central theme, as is the internal division of the city along lines of religion, gender, and, especially, class. In addition to the skills training common to all English Literature students (essay-writing, independent reading, group discussion, oral presentation, small-group autonomous learning) this course develops the student's understanding of: (i) the ways in which urban space is constructed in the various discourses of the novel as a genre; (ii) the relation of civic identities to national identities as the novel brings them into relation; (iii) a broad understanding of the history of the novel in Scotland in the 19th and 20th centuries.

This course covers issues concerning the causes, processes, obstacles, and consequences of democratic transition in the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia - three of the largest and the most populous countries of Southeast Asia. The specific issues to be covered include economic growth and stagnation, the middle class, capitalist rule, rural politics, political parties, military coups, corruption, electoral violence, gangsters, social movements, street protests, the monarchy, communal conflicts, and female politicians.

This course examines the study of global climate systems and climate change. It covers the controls of temporal and spatial variations in earth's climate and its histories of past climates preserved in the geological record, as well as modern research methods that are used in paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental reconstructions.

This course examines the mechanisms that drive neurons and neural circuits throughout the brain and body. The lectures explore how environmental and neuronal signals are translated into and encoded in nerve impulses and how this information is conveyed through synapses to transmit information about the external world to control the body as well as different behaviors and to store information for future use (learning and memory). The mechanisms by which sensory and motor information are integrated through neural circuits in the brain and spinal cord are also explored in detail. Practical classes provide an accessible and engaging experience to delve into the inner workings of neurons and sensory systems. 

This course provides the basic concepts of organic chemistry, the geometric structure and the methods of manufacturing chemical compounds and their reactivities. The course covers: (1) the structure and the methods of manufacturing of hydrocarbons such as alkane, alkene and alkyne; (2) the nucleophilic substitution and elimination reaction of halogen compounds; (3) stereochemistry; (4) ethers and epoxy compounds, and (5) characteristics and manufacturing methods of alcoholic compounds. 

This course has two parts. The first part deals with the methodology of formal visual analysis through the study of paintings from nineteenth-century Britain. It provides the opportunity to apply this methodology by analyzing a specific painting and giving a presentation on its history and composition. The second part of the course involves an in-depth analysis of British photographs and the themes that they represent. It explores the politics of representation and as what is at stake in terms of ethics and positioning when pictures are taken, in the process when they are made, and in their conditions of production. Themes discussed include the representation of class, ethnic minorities, women, disabilities, poverty, national identity, and collective representations, particularly through the prism of portraits and self-portraits.

This course introduces the theory, agronomic practices, and ecological mechanisms of Organic Production Systems. First, the different approaches and production methods of soils, plants, trees, and animals in organic farming are presented with lectures, farm excursions, and farmer interviews. Different farming systems such as organic farming, biodynamic farming, nature-inclusive agriculture, regenerative agriculture, conservation agriculture, agroforestry, and permaculture are presented and discussed. Secondly, the course focuses specifically on the integration and cooperation of the different agricultural elements and concentrates on the interactions between annual and perennial arable crops, livestock species, trees, soils, and landscapes in the Dutch/European environment. Examples from all over the world are used to demonstrate integration and cooperation. The course uses certified organic systems as the baseline and starting point. This course does not discuss conventional farming practices.

This course studies hormones and the regulation of metabolism, reproduction and water/salt homeostasis in our body. Topics include: adrenal medulla; adrenal cortex, ACTH, renin-angiotensin, and atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP); the thyroid; hypothalamus releasing and inhibitory factors; pituitary gland; neurohypophysis; growth hormones; prolactin; and gastro-entero-pancreatric peptides. 

This course introduces topics relevant for understanding the modern framework for evaluating investment opportunities. It combines key elements of managerial accounting and finance, as well as modern portfolio and asset pricing theory. The course discusses how to apply the core tool of analytic finance to assess the value of company projects, including those undertaken by start‐ups, and how to analyze financial market conditions to recommend investment strategies. The course discusses topics including key accounting metrics and applying these metrics to evaluate the performance of a company; identity and interpretation techniques to value cash flows from investing in firm projects; developing equity valuation frameworks that link stock prices to firm cash flows and risk; deriving optimal allocation rules for investing in portfolios with one or two risky assets; identifying optimal portfolio allocation rules for many risky assets, such as stocks, commodities, real estate, and bonds; combining the optimal allocation rules with index models to identify the degree of diversification in an optimal portfolio; hypothesizing and deriving a linear relation between risk and expected returns; define factors that determine bond prices; and synthesizing bond pricing relations with no‐arbitrage equilibrium models of spot and forward rates.

This course explores anthropology in Thailand.