English

This course reviews different types of environmental behaviors, the drivers of such behaviors, and how communication strategies can stimulate pro-environmental behavior. Analyzing and evaluating existing campaigns in the field of sustainability and designing their campaigns to change environmental behavior on campus for a real-world client is applied.

This course examines the nature, constitution and effects of the contemporary global political economy from a critical perspective, discussing the variety of approaches to and understandings of global political-economic practices, actors, patterns and ideas. Introducing  international political economy as a field of study and a space of human interaction, the course examines the relationship between politics and economics and the reasons why power, resources and privilege are often concentrated in particular hands. Scrutinizing the past, present and future of the global political economy, the course outlines and overviews key histories in, approaches to and developments of the global economic order. By focusing on particular dynamics in areas such as international development, trade, finance, production, the environment and gender, the course shines a light on how inequality is generated and maintained.

Development economics is a relatively new and unique field, emerging after post-World War II decolonization and is unique in certain aspects. This course covers the leading issues in economic development for social science students, promoting a balanced understanding based on theories and empirical research. Starting from a basic understanding of poverty, inequality and economic growth, this class focuses more on international issues that less developed economies face in present time, such as trade, foreign direct investment, balance of payment crisis, and structural adjustment, as well as other policy issues. 

This course focuses on the basic knowledge of biological phenomena and the principles underlying the life of all living organisms. It covers basic concepts of microbiology, plant biology and animal biology. 

This course stimulates critical thinking and personal development rather than providing clear-cut management recipes. The course covers management myths and realities, paradox thinking, organizational design, teams, learning, leadership, and corporate social responsibility.

The course introduces students to a range of contemporary critical theories and debates on the body and identity. Students explore the body as a site on which social constructions of difference are inscribed, as well as how these constructions can be challenged and resisted. Bodies are regulated and self-regulated, marginalized, oppressed, erased, owned, visualized, textualized, and designed. The body is not isolated; rather, it extends and connects with other bodies, practices, human and non-human entities, and technologies. The course also examines the ways in which digital developments are reshaping our understanding of our bodies and question what it means to be human.

This course builds students’ understanding of the causal mechanics underlying conflicts across a variety of settings and periods, the character of the violence in these conflicts, and the prospects for resolution. Drawing on major theoretical approaches to the explanation of violence, students apply these theoretical frameworks to an empirical examination of political violence in a range of periods and settings, including Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Syria, Ireland, Sierra Leone, and others. Students explore how and to what extent the major approaches in the scholarship explain the reality of conflict in different regional, cultural, and historical contexts.

This course is an introduction to finance. It starts by introducing the value of money, interest rates, and financial contracts, in particular, what are fair prices for contracts and why no one uses fair prices in real life. Then, there is a review of probability theory followed by an introduction to financial markets in discrete time. In discrete time, students learn how the ideas of fair pricing apply to price contracts commonly found in stock exchanges. The next block focuses on continuous time finance and contains an introduction to the basic ideas of Stochastic calculus.

This course discusses and develops critical social-scientific perspectives on citizenship, belonging, and difference in contemporary, late-capitalist societies. In a world characterized by flux and the transgression of geographic and symbolic boundaries, a great deal of effort is invested in fixing and freezing identities and controlling and regulating borders. This dialectic of flow and closure is examined from a critical perspective that places contemporary social and cultural dynamics in the historical context of the rise of modern capitalism and nationalism while taking into account 19th and 20th-century experiences of colonialism, authoritarianism, and fascism. The first part of the course focuses on theories of modernity, citizenship, and differences in the political and social sciences, political philosophy, and the humanities. In the second part, several contemporary issues, including (the rise of) new forms of nationalism and the far right; debates about religious diversity and secularism; gender and sexuality; race and racism; and the transformation & politics of identity in neoliberal societies are the focus. The course brings together perspectives from various fields, while especially focusing on perspectives from the global south and from (relatively) marginalized academic fields, like queer studies, critical race perspectives, and postcolonial studies. Students develop and undertake a small research project on identity, based on which they write a final paper.

This course introduces students to a selection of independent American films which are frequently overlooked by the dominant histories of American cinema. The films selected are chosen from a diverse range of American filmmakers from the 1960s to the present, and the course therefore hopes to provide an account of American film which reaches beyond the dominant Hollywood model. This leads to consideration of the divisions in American society and how these can be perceived through the work of independent filmmakers.