Denmark

This course introduces and utilizes classic as well as more recent concepts and analytical frameworks to explain some of the policy phenomena that puzzles students of public policy. The first part of the course introduces theoretical approaches to studying the five basic stages of the policy process and discusses some of the more recent developments in the policy studies discipline, taking mainly a temporal perspective. The policy phenomena addressed includes path dependency, punctuated equilibrium, sequencing, policy feedbacks, policy capacity, policy design, reform sustainability, disproportionality in public policy, and policy success and failure. The way in which these analytical concepts have been applied to study real world policy challenges is illustrated through examples and discussed in class. The second part of the course applies the theoretical concepts and analytical frameworks by analyzing real world examples of policy making. Students select their own case and analytical framework for their assignment. The course is designed for Danish and international students. The wealth of knowledge on national policy processes brought to the classroom by the students is utilized to explore nuances in concept application and to explore how differences in institutions affect policy making.

This course reflects on how the institutions, issues, actors, and practices of global environmental governance have evolved over the past half-century since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, the first global conference on the environment. In addition, it explores the potential of current environmental governance systems to accelerate the social, economic, political, and ecological transformations for a sustainable future.

This course examines the traditional economic theory which assumes that economic agents are fully rational with unlimited cognitive abilities and willpower and considers how individuals frequently and systematically make decisions in contradiction with these standard presumptions. Against the background of this finding the course discusses the shortcomings of traditional theories in economics and finance; how new concepts and theories in behavioral finance and behavioral economics address these shortcomings; how these new theories relate to the traditional theories; what are their strengths and limitations; and how the new behavioral presumptions in behavioral finance and economics change the predictions of classical economic theories. 

This course analyzes the place of gender in world politics. It introduces theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of gender in international relations, and reviews different fields of research, focusing on security studies, with cutting-edge literature. The course examines how both the practice of international politics and the academic discipline are gendered. It takes its starting point by reflecting on international relations theory to understand why the mainstream of international relations has traditionally had difficulties in engaging with feminist critiques. It looks at the early feminist debates and turns to themes of international relations such as war, conflict, militarism, and security through a gender perspective. It analyzes the role of bodies in international relations and their complex intersecting identities to understand how gender is intertwined with categories such as race, class, and sexuality. The question of how these complex identities give subjects possibility for agency runs throughout the modules. The course emphasizes how gender, security, and politics are discursively constructed through both language and images. To shed light on these discursive constructions, the course conducts several case studies.

This course examines the meaning and role of critique in the social sciences. It focuses on various theoretical conceptions of critique and the application of critique in different fields of research across the social sciences. Through a combination of lectures and discussions, the course develops the skill of criticizing social problems or pathologies and uses this skill in research across disciplines in investigations of the social world. 

This course explores classic and contemporary issues in environmental psychology. Topics include belonging, place attachment, and place identity; restorative environments, health, and well-being; perceptions of natural and urban environments; socially marked spaces and stigmatized environments; territory, boundaries, contested spaces, and environmental conflicts; pro-environmental action and environmental protection. Seminars are discussion-based and structured around weekly set readings that incorporate theoretical and empirical work, including quantitative and qualitative studies.

This course provides an introduction to basic European Union (EU) law for non-law students, including the core elements of the EU legal system, EU institutions, decision-making procedures, and sources of law. It covers the concept of sovereignty, the relationship between EU law and national law, as well as the relationship between EU law and international law; necessary for working with the substantive areas of EU law, including the internal market, the free movement of goods, food and agricultural production, and environment and nature protection. Examples are drawn from areas such as environment and nature protection, agriculture, and food production, including ways the EU seeks to promote sustainable development. 

This course provides insight into how programs written in high-level language are implemented on a computer. It covers various elements of interpretation and translation of programming languages: lexical analysis, syntax analysis, type checking, interpretation, code generation, register allocation, and storage management. It reviews the basic methods for implementing these elements, including the use and operation of semi-automatic tools. In connection with lexical analysis and syntax analysis, the course demonstrates how descriptions that are convenient for people (respectively, regular expressions and context-free grammar) are transformed into automata that are convenient for machines. These transformations are the foundation for tools that can automatically produce lexical analyzers and syntax analyzers based on descriptions. In connection with the generation of intermediate and machine code, the course reviews how machine code can be generated on the basis of the syntactic structure of a program and presents different methods for optimizing code.

This course examines transnational global climate change developments through the lens of broader debates about transnationalism in world politics. It explores how and under what conditions sub-national and non-state actors such as cities, corporations, NGOs, and Indigenous peoples have become central to global efforts to address climate change. The course also considers the diverse forms of transnational governance led by these actors and the relationship of these initiatives to multilateral treaties and other state-based forms of climate change regulation. It reviews efforts to assess whether transnationalism contributes to a more effective global response to climate change and reflects on the normative issues raised as transnational actors and forms of governance become more deeply embedded in global climate politics.

This course begins by focusing on the theories of rhetoric to trace the rise and fall of rhetorical citizenship, the development of the concept, and its challenges in rhetoric-related discussions over the past twenty years. The study of the current intersections between rhetoric and citizenship includes discussions of the deliberative democracy and the relationship between democracy and dissent, debate, protest, anti-citizenship, social movements, civic engagement, and resistance. The course explores the relationship between science, politics, and the public, and includes topics such as climate change and pandemics. It involves lectures, debates, group work, and fieldwork, and includes oral presentations, the production of a podcast section, and a workshop on the exam assignment. The course creates a multi-language learning environment for the comfort of all participants with an active-learning approach to teaching and engagement expected during each class meeting.