Germany

In recent years Machine Learning has started to influence all aspects of human life, and education is no exception. In this seminar course, we will introduce basic concepts of machine learning and education and learn how Machine Learning is employed nowadays to solve day-to-day problems, which are the most common in higher education. The problems include data manipulation, feature engineering, drop-out prediction and visualisation of student characteristics. Students will learn basics of Machine Learning using one of the most prominent Data Science languages R in the context of higher education data.

For this excursion-based course, we will visit the Museum of Modern Electronic Music (MOMEN), considering questions around legacy,  historiography, and representation in the telling of electronic dance music’s histories. We will also avail ourselves of experiential opportunities on offer at the museum, such as DJ workshops and artist talks. In addition, we will visit the Robert Johnson nightclub in nearby Offenbach, which will afford firsthand experience as well as an opportunity to think about nightlife ethnography. In the seminar leading up to the excursion, we will explore the histories of German popular electronic music and Detroit techno, discuss nightlife fieldwork, and consider what might happen when museums and electronic music meet.

As possibly the oldest representation of embodied difference, monsters have always served as warnings not to stray off the beaten path. They might warn against the dangers that lurk in unknown territories or against engaging in aberrant behavior so as to avoid degenerating into something monstrous oneself. Monstrosity is thus not only a matter of those fantastical beings that we find in science fiction and fantasy narratives, but has always been attached to human bodies as well, or those who are designated as inhuman or less than human. In this seminar, we will engage with literary representations of monstrosity that blur the lines between the real and the fantastical and thematize monsters as both supernatural and otherworldly, as well as real material beings. Analyzing such literary constructions of monstrosity thus allows us to delve into an unconscious realm of social anxieties regarding human difference and non-normative embodiment with special attention to the intersections of race, gender, and disability.

After decades of division and the restoration of urban normality after 1990, Berlin is in a situation that makes it sensible and exciting to take a look back at the “Golden Times” of the 1920s and compare them with the questions and problems of today's situation. With the founding of the Weimar Republic in 1918, the political framework conditions were in place to reorganize the Berlin area. The city of Berlin in its current area was created on October 1, 1920 with the “Greater Berlin Law”, which brought about the merger with 7 other cities, 59 rural communities and 27 manor districts. After this merger, Berlin developed into a metropolis in the 1920s that is still considered a symbol of modernity today. The 1920s were only “golden” for a few, but against the background of the size and anonymity of the megacity and the freedoms guaranteed by the new republic, the 1920s appeared to be a time of experiments, attractions and the fascination for the new. What problems had to be overcome back then and what solution strategies were tested and implemented? And what ideas about the future of Berlin were developed back then? Against the background outlined and in a comparative perspective, the seminar will deal with questions of local administration, economy and work, housing, transport and infrastructure and, in two main areas, with questions about population and migration as well as the offers of culture and cultural workers. Excursions in the city area and visits to museums/exhibitions are planned for the areas listed. 

The lecture series on "Advances in Water Management and Climate Adaptation" is a comprehensive course designed to explore the latest techniques, tools, technologies, strategies, and policies in managing water resources and adapting to the challenges posed by climate change. Tools and technologies will include, among others, advanced modelling techniques, digital technologies, remote sensing, and geographic information systems. Water management and climate adaptation strategies and policies will unpack the intertwined relationship between environmental, technological, societal, and economic stakes, and include topics related to climate justice, multi-objective optimization, risk and conflict management, and multi-sector dynamics under uncertainty. After an introductory session, different early-stage researchers from international universities, research institutions, technology centers, and policy institutes will present cutting-edge research, projects, lessons learned, challenges, and visions on water resources management and climate adaptation. Each lecture will be followed by a class discussion.

This course examines the intricate relationship between colonialism, urban development, and economic growth through the lens of political ecology. A central theme of the course is the examination of colonial legacies and their enduring impact on contemporary urban and environmental dynamics. We will critically analyze how Europe's historical growth has often occurred at the expense of other regions, relying on extractive and exploitation of resources in colonized territories to fuel metropolitan centers. Through the classical readings in this field, contemporary case studies, and critical discussions, we will interrogate the role of colonialism in shaping global patterns of urbanization, resource extraction, and environmental degradation. By the end of the course, we will gain insights into potential pathways for building more equitable and environmentally sustainable futures.

Since the Covid19 pandemic and in the context of climate change, slogans such as “follow the science” or appeals to “trust science” have become ubiquitous. In fact, for modern societies, science and scientists are probably the last remaining unquestioned authorities; when we need guidance, we turn to scientific experts and trust that they will give us solid advice. However, this is a relatively new development; during the time of the ascent of the sciences, from the 18th through to the mid-20th centuries, new discoveries and inventions in the sciences as well as the scientists and inventors themselves were met with fear, skepticism or suspicion. One powerful expression of this attitude of societies towards the sciences can be found in popular works of fiction: we still use the names of fictional characters such as Faust, Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll or Dr Strangelove to characterize mad, evil or amoral scientists as well as dangerous scientific and/ or technological developments. Program: In this course, we will examine the development of literary / cultural imaginations of science and scientists, looking at key texts as well as key developments in the sciences: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, galvanism and the creation of life; Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde: experimental drugs and the split personality; H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau: Vivisection and genetics; Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: eugenics, genetic engineering and chemistry; the figure of the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the ‘father of the atomic bomb’, in post-war reality and fiction, and, finally, the benevolent scientific research on climate change as presented in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Earth trilogy. Based on extracts from the texts and on academic texts which contextualize and analyze the topics, discussions in class will take literature as a point of departure for a more fundamental examination of the connection between science and society.

This course aims to introduce students to the sociological study of social inequalities. That is, to gain a broad understanding of the social processes through which some end up having more resources than others and through which some become included and some excluded. In the introductory sessions, we will begin by defining social inequality and its relevant dimensions, learning about its trends in Europe and the world as well as its pernicious effects for society. Students will also learn key sociological concepts such as social class, social mobility, and ethnoracial categorization processes. In the second part of the course students will be introduced to some of sociology’s most studied mechanisms that help explain the perpetuation of inequalities in a wide range of contexts such as cumulative advantage, opportunity hoarding, discrimination, boundary making, and social networks. As a next step we will learn about some of the most relevant engines of inequality such as families and schools, labor markets, tax systems, extreme weather events, and migration systems. We will end the course by learning about how to tackle inequality. We will discuss how acceptance or opposition to it comes about and reflect on sociology’s relevance in addressing societal disparities.

This course focuses on deepening the knowledge of selected topics in personality psychology as well as the practical application of the knowledge and methods. This includes the evaluation and interpretation of psychodiagnostic methods of personality psychology as well as a critical confrontation with empirical studies from primary literature.

Participants explore software security hands-on with the goal to develop and host an international information security contest (¨Attack/Defense CTF”): contesting teams from all over the world receive virtual machines built during the project. The machines run participants’ services, containing secret tokens ("flags") that other teams have to collect over the wire using exploits as part of the game. To build the contest, participants will dive deep into the security of a platform and language of their choice and create a software project with well-hidden software vulnerabilities in this language. Furthermore, a game server will be developed as a team, including scripts to check the health of services for each contestant. As part of the development and hosting, participants will develop and extend the infrastructure required to host the competition, strengthen their skills in penetration testing and exploitation, and build upon other technical and non-technical abilities, depending on their role in the project. Such skills may include networking, continuous integration, agile development, project management and public relations. Furthermore, students develop and extend the infrastructure, required for the competition. The course gives participants the freedom to explore tools of their choice, build software and find creative ways to corrupt it, with the work done both independently and in small teams. Insecure software is a potential threat to both the industry and the democratic society. The course supports goals on sustainability by raising awareness on IT security, and teaching the ability to detect, fix and avoid security issues in software, not only for the students, but also for the international participants of the competition. Furthermore, we support open-source, by making all material publicly available in the end.