Denmark

This course introduces students to research at the intersection of several disciplines, using methods derived from botany, anthropology, ecology, economy, ethno-medicine, and climate and conservation science. This course studies the core concepts of ethnobotany which is followed by advanced studies of people-plant relations, focusing upon the importance of wild and domesticated plants to local livelihoods and opportunities for sustainable use of tropical natural resources. The course highlights patterns in plant use and the role that local peoples’ knowledge, institutions, and cultural perspectives can play in plant resource use, management, and conservation. It is composed of alternating lectures, exercises, and discussions, including student presentations and lectures by external specialists. Students work in interdisciplinary groups to define a common research project and plan field work.

This course focuses on protest and activism in contemporary Eastern Europe. It focuses primarily on the post-Soviet region, particularly Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. However, through guest lectures, it also explores protest in Poland and the former Yugoslavia. The course examines various types of protest movements and political activism, including environmental movements and grass-root initiatives, protest events and large scale protest movements, activism and political activities of political emigrants, and other contemporary cases in the region. Furthermore, it introduces several theories related to studies of protest and social movements. The course consists of lectures, discussions, and student presentations.

This course introduces food systems and their actors as a framework for understanding and analyzing the development in the food sector. It provides a basis for handling future changes of food systems in a societal context. The course explores food systems and food networks as conceptualizations of the complex system behind food products and as useful tool in analysis of food related developments. It examines the historical development and structure of food systems (mainstream and alternative food systems), including an overview of changing technologies; structure, location, and actors as well as salient political issues characterizing food systems in different periods. The course then discusses the governance of food systems, including an introduction to dynamics of policy processes, and questions of the power and interests of core actors as well the role of social movements. Finally, it presents key concepts and theories useful for understanding an analyzing the development and transition of food systems, such as socio-material approaches to food systems change, sustainability, and actor understandings.

The course discusses the role of cultural policy in the age of platform giants and how the digital media ecology of major platforms creates inter-dependencies with other platforms, established cultural institutions, legacy media, public service institutions, digital creators, and users. The course begins with a discussion on the platform society and how the notion of digital cultural politics relates to cultural, media, and communication policy, as well as the internet and cultural industries. It lays the foundations from the perspective of dominant platforms and platform providers, with a specific focus on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, and YouTube. The second part of the course looks at the inter-dependencies that these platforms generate between themselves and cultural institutions, analyzing cultural institution’s use of platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. The third part of the course focuses on data politics, user rights ethics, and discrimination. The final part of the course is composed of a day-long workshop where students work on themes and topics of their own choice as part of their final project. This course is taken in conjunction with the course Cultural Policy – Theory, Method & Analysis (HMKK03611U), a compulsory but non-credit-bearing course that provides students with adequate tools to conduct research within the field of cultural policy, with an emphasis on the relationship between theoretical framework, methodological design, and analysis. 

This course focuses on the analysis of various media texts, historical developments within media, and their social and cultural contexts in the English-speaking world. It provides a foundation for understanding film, television, and digital media, and their relation to representation, culture, technology, and aesthetics. The course introduces media such as photography, feature films, avant-garde cinema, documentary films, television, digital media, print, and social media; and covers the concepts, methods, and various cultural theories within film and media. Formal and stylistics elements of film such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, and editing, as well as approaches to understanding narrative and genre, are also covered. Students examine media products as a part of their social and cultural contexts and work collaboratively on the creation of a multimedia product.