English

Developmental psychology is the scientific study of age‐related change and consistency across the spectrum of human growth. This course builds on students' prior knowledge and introduces them to longstanding and current issues. The focus is on presenting the key elements of each perspective under scrutiny and then inviting students to critically review, examine, and evaluate the available information. Topics include: Stressed out kids? The over-scheduling debate. Prejudiced from preschool? The development of stigma in childhood. Decision-making in pediatrics: How should child patients get involved? Are children reliable and credible witnesses? Impressionable young minds? Screen time & child outcomes.  

This course considers and explains why and how the international system is characterized by the return of a tough competition among states. That is what we call power politics. This dynamic is reflected in the return of inter-state conflicts (Russia/Ukraine, Iran/Israel) and the risk of their spreading to other regions (Taiwan, South China Sea). The central question addressed in this course from both a conceptual and empirical perspective is why we moved within a decade from a world of economic interdependence based on the decline of interstate wars to a world where states are on the forefront of global competition including through the weaponization of economic interdependence. This course is by definition transversal and trans regional since the competition affects all regions of the world. It focuses on three types of actors: the drivers of this new competition who are setting the new rules of the game (United States and China), the contenders who have global ambitions while facing obstacles on their way (Russia, India, and the European Union) and the Hedgers who are middle income countries who are trying to leverage this new global dynamic for their own benefit (Brazil, South Africa, UAE, Indonesia, and Vietnam among others).

Receiving an adequate level of education can be seen as a fundamental social right. Yet, the extent and ways in which education is provided vary substantially across countries, social groups, and over-time. This course is designed to introduce students to the study of educational inequality and education policy. The course begins by reviewing the main goals, achievements, and outstanding challenges in education policy in the early 21st century. Specifically, it takes a historical perspective to review the significant progress made with respect to providing education to large parts of the world's population and with respect to reducing gender inequality in educational attainment. The course then turns to one key policy challenge of the early 21st century—reducing the inequalities in educational attainment between individuals from different socio-economic backgrounds. It discusses normative arguments for why we may care to understand and address inequality of educational opportunity. Moreover, the course examines the social mechanisms that account for educational inequalities between individuals from different social backgrounds and discusses whether and how policies and social interventions can reduce these educational inequalities. The structure of the course follows the early life-course and educational trajectory of individuals to critically examine educational policies on early childhood education, the notion of "social investment", ability tracking at the secondary level, the function of school autonomy, the effectiveness of education policy to equalize access to elite institutions, the role of large crises — such as the COVID-19 pandemic — in exacerbating existing inequalities, and how education policy can protect children's learning in the face of such crises. The course fosters students' ability to think like a social scientist and to critically approach and examine major issues of educational inequality. It develops the conceptual tools and substantive knowledge to address current questions on educational inequality.

This course presents a practical and theoretical introduction to modern autonomous mobile robot systems. It gives students a broad introduction to the field spanning topics including hardware, software, AI and machine learning, and human-robot interaction and robot ethics. Students study the technology and methods underlying a robot’s ability to sense and act in its environment. Through a series of labs and assignments, students gain a proficiency in developing applications for robots in both simulation and real-world settings  The course has the following key components: an introduction to mobile robots – sensors, actuators, and control paradigms; the fundamental theory for autonomous mobile robots (kinematics, localization, mapping, and path planning); the scientific methods for evaluating robot performance; an introduction to the field of human-robot interaction; and robots-in-the-wild: case studies of real-world robots and their ethical implications.

The course is an interdisciplinary course drawing on political science, law, and history. Although the major focus of the course is on the European Court of Justice, the politics and law of other courts and international tribunals are also discussed, certainly including the United States Supreme Court and the politics of the US constitution, but also perhaps including the Supreme Court of Ireland and the German Bundesverfassungsgericht as well as international dispute settlement tribunals such as the World Trade Organization, Investor-State Dispute Settlement systems, and the European Convention on Human Rights. Students also study alternative approaches to understanding and investigating court decision-making, including through a focus on legal texts, use of the comparative method, archival research, judicial biography, and quantitative approaches.

Topics include regular languages, context-free languages, feature structures, and brief introductions to probabilistic methods in natural language processing and recursive computation of semantic values from grammatical structures.

This course offers students the philosophical and critical theoretical tools to analyze the complex phenomenon of violence by exploring the contemporary field of the Environmental Post humanities. Assembling perspectives from contemporary feminist and political philosophy with environmental post humanist approaches, violence here is examined as an (im)material socio-political phenomenon that is impacted by categories such as gender, race/ethnicity, dis/ability, class, sexuality, age, and others and the societal power relations that have been engendered by these – and other intersecting – categories. The course focuses on the analysis of eco-violence, the more-than-human, and processes of de/humanization.

Demons, ghosts, and monsters have populated the cultural landscape in Japan for centuries. Appearing in anime, manga, games, and movies, mysterious creatures continue to form the core of contemporary popular culture, and have sparked a global obsession with Japanese monsters. This course explores the cultural history of the strange and supernatural in Japanese literary, visual, and performing arts. Engaging with primary and critical sources from the eighth century to the present, the course considers the social roles that representations of the "weird" have played in Japan.

This course examines the ways in which contemporary practices of visual communication are being reshaped by digital media. It provides an overview of the digitization of key visual media such as photography, cinema and video, and addresses the social and political implications of the growing use of digital networks as primary forms for the distribution and consumption of images. Students will engage with key issues for 21st century media industries including: how professional organizations such as news media and institutions such as courts deal with the changing ground for claims to truth and realism by media such as photography, film and video; the implications of photo-sharing and social networking websites as new cultural forms for the circulation of images; the blurring of lines between amateur and professional media production, and the growing use of visual communication by activists and NGOs.

The problems facing less developed countries are among the greatest challenges facing the world today. This course focuses on the diverse structures and common characteristics of less developed countries and offers an evaluation of policies being pursued. It begins by discussing the idea of economic development before moving onto sources of and barriers to development. It uses contemporary models of economic development to investigate why some countries are rich and others are poor.