English

This course introduces students to the field of environmental economics. They discuss and analyze how markets, without policy intervention, fail to capture environmental externalities. They then discuss the possible regulatory measures and policy instruments available to correct such market failures yielding what might be the socially optimal level of pollution. The course introduces various environmental valuation techniques that help identifying the costs and benefits of controlling environmental externalities. 

The course covers some of the most prominent tools in modelling and simulation. Both deterministic and stochastic models are covered. These include mathematical optimization, the application of sophisticated mathematical methods to make optimal decisions, and simulation, the playing-out of real-life scenarios in a (computer-based) modelling environment. Topics may include formulation of management problems using linear/nonlinear and network models (these could include binary, integer, convex, and stochastic programming models) as well as solving these problems and analyzing the solutions; generating random variables using Monte Carlo simulation; discrete event simulation; variance reduction techniques; Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. The course teaches students to use modelling and simulation computer packages.

Blue Science is a module that allows students to experience interactive university teaching and learning by dealing with their social and ecological responsibility in concrete and active ways. It came up as an transdisciplinary extension of the seminar Blue Engineering, which has been offered for over 10 years, promoting socially and ecologically responsible engineering through a variety of alternative teaching methods. Blue Science is open for students of all areas and backgrounds with an interest in technology. Science and its relation to technology, individuals, nature and society is reflected, analyzed and questioned in interdisciplinary discussions facilitated through diverse methods. Students are encouraged to think and learn independently and creatively, and therefore teacher-centered instruction does not occur in this module. Students acquire the competence to unveil the complex interdependency of their social, political, ecological and economic surroundings. This includes the consideration of different values, interests and needs within a global perspective as well as within one class(room). The course design encourages democratic decision-making not only to solve but also to define problems within the course itself and moreover outside of the classroom. By developing and carrying out their own teaching units, students are actively involved in the teaching process and co-create the course. This allows students to bring in their own areas of interest and to share their findings and points of view with others, creating learning material that may be used in future editions of the module.

Queer history is both a subject and a practice, and this course provides an introduction to both. It is, first, an introductory global history of sexuality, demonstrating the vast range of approaches different societies have taken to regulating and experiencing the body and desire. It also aims to introduce students to the method of queer history, one of many approaches to the past which illuminate how Historical Grand Narratives are produced, and how they might change. 

This course examines aspects of the historical and contemporary development of film form. In the first half of the term, it looks at crosscutting and continuity editing in films by D.W. Griffith, Alfred Hitchcock, and Christopher Nolan. In the second half it studies discontinuity and montage in various films, including work by Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Jean-Luc Godard, and Isiah Medina. Students are also introduced to basic editing software and the final assessment is in the form of a video essay.  

The course provides a broad overview of this diverse critical discourse over the past generation, while also paying close attention to some of the most pressing debates currently animating the field. Topics include identities, sexualities, temporalities, homophobia, activism, deviance, performance and transgression. 

This course provides students an introduction to recent developments in the migration and job search literature. Students learn how to formulate and solve dynamic models, and apply these models to analyze a range of topics including migration, employment transitions, and wage dispersion across workers. Throughout the course, analysis is linked to the current debate on migration and other labor market policies.

This course is a work experience placement, which students undertake in an art-related work environment in London. Students examine established and emerging art world careers, together with cultural and management issues related to the creative sector. Part of the class is a range of sessions designed to develop and enhance students’ professional skills, including training on wider employability skills, such interview skills, networking, and communication. Students are introduced to contemporary management models for commercial and non-commercial practices through theory, case studies, and practical work. The course prepares students for a wide range of careers in the art world, wider creative sector, or for further study.

The course introduces the topic of monetary systems in theory and in practice. It focuses on how today's international monetary systems have developed historically and, in particular, how today's monetary system may facilitate or impede the transition to a sustainable economy.

Archives do not just preserve the past, they allow for new questions about the present to emerge. They contain remnants of specific places and times, and they are the ground for new relations to spring and new connections to be made. In this seminar, we ask: Why archiving and for whom? How do archives shape societies and constitute knowledge? We will engage with “awkward archives” in Berlin – archives posing problems and causing disquieting frictions. In each of the seminar’s modules, we address a particular modern ideology through a particular Berlin archive, including the following: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Colonial Neighbours Archive of SAVVY Contemporary, Naomi Wilzig Art Collection, Museum of Natural History, a database of German colonial punitive expeditions, and the Hahne-Niehoff Archive of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The seminar focuses on field visits with methodological exercises, which introduce students to diverse ways of doing research that they will build on to articulate their own research outcomes in a multimodal portfolio.