English

The course equips students with the skills necessary to understand, critically assess, and undertake the research design process relevant to their degree. Students gain a good grasp of the behavioral assumptions in social science research, knowledge of a range of data collection methods (and how to assess the appropriateness of each), as well as the steps within a successful research project design. More specifically students learn how to choose a topic, formulate a research question and hypotheses, select cases, navigate measurement issues, and undertake a range of data collection methods.

This course introduces the molecular biology and the biological hallmarks of cancer. It describes different cancer types, the oncogenes or tumor suppressors that are known to cause cancer and the signaling pathways that are perturbed in cancer. Furthermore, it discusses the different hallmarks of cancer, such as cell proliferation and death, invasion and metastasis, and metabolism. The course also covers current therapeutic approaches to different cancers and current research trends in cancer biology. 

The fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe brought democracy to the region for the first time in over forty years. Academics now had a new wave of democratization and intense political change to study. This provided scholars with an almost unique opportunity to apply existing methods of political analysis to newly established democratic states. Even so, no country can escape its past and previous experience and structures can continue to exert an influence long after they have been officially swept away. Now, after more than two decades of democratic rule in the region institutions and practices have been established and are ripe for study. What can existing theories of party development, electoral behavior and executive-legislative relations tell us about politics in Central and Eastern Europe? Have the specific democratic trajectories of countries in the region generated new or modified theories for political science? Are there similarities in comparative political developments across the region that lead us to believe there is a peculiarly "Central and East European political science"?

This interdisciplinary course offers an introduction to archaeology, providing a grounding in the main concepts, methodologies, and techniques of investigating the past through material evidence and physical environments. Topics include the identification and ways of investigating archaeological sites and materials, as well as how archaeologists and cultural heritage practitioners disseminate, preserve, and curate the past for professional and public audiences. A key component of this course is introducing the multi-disciplinary nature of the subject; lectures and seminars cover topics that demonstrate the application of modern scientific and digital technologies to ancient landscapes and materials; included is uses of Geophysical Information Systems, Environmental Analyses, Ancient DNA, and the creation and management of databases. Tutorials and workshops focus on methods and approaches, and the presentation of data and its interpretation.

This course examines the history of early modern China and Japan (ca. 1600–1912) through the lens of gender and sexuality. By examining topics including Confucianism and the family, Samurai status, imperial expansion, commerce and leisure, medicine and religion, it makes a case for gender and sexuality as drivers of historical change in the early modern world. It examines not only women and women’s history, but also men and masculinity, gender-nonconforming communities, and the changing relationship between gender, sexuality and social, economic, and cultural power. It will introduce key questions and debates in the study of East Asian history and the history of gender and sexuality through a range of primary and secondary sources as well as film, fiction and multimedia.

The course focuses on the relationship between the government and the market in terms of both equity and efficiency. The Nordic welfare state is analyzed both empirically and theoretically, with a special emphasis on the case of Sweden. The course gives the necessary economic tools to judge when government interventions are motivated, how these interventions can be done efficiently, and which problems can arise due to imperfect information and other deviations from a perfect market environment. The course includes a history of the development of the Swedish welfare state and considers arguments for and against the Nordic welfare state model. The course proceeds by covering a range of the many tools at the disposal of policymakers for jointly maximizing welfare and equity, keeping track of both the spending and the financing of the public sector. Topics covered include public goods, externalities, environmental policy, public insurance, income redistribution, efficient and equitable taxation, retirement policies, privatization and quasi-markets, fiscal federalism, and the constraints on fiscal policies imposed by globalization. Part of the course is also devoted to how collective decisions are made and the challenges involved in a collective decision process.

This course covers basic molecular and cell biology fields together with its methodologies, providing the class opportunities to read scientific papers. Special emphases will be on the biologists’ way of thinking as well as the basic concepts on the gene/protein structure and function. The course covers:

1. Logic and basic concepts in biology: How does a biologist work and what does a biologist know?  

2. Methods in biology: What kind of techniques does a biologist employ?  

3. Specific topics dealing with the cell structure and function.