Netherlands

This class introduces students to the system by which powerful countries in the world have related to each other over the past 400 years. This course provides an understanding of how major world powers have managed their relationships and competing interests while crafting a stable system that allows them to pursue their own goals.  Aspects of cooperation and competition as they manifest in military, economic, and cultural means are investigated to see how these fields have shaped the global order and how economics, technology, and culture have influenced the interaction.

This course is an intensive introduction to programming in Java that assumes no prior programming experience. It explores all aspects of modern programming by means of lectures and hands-on practical lab sessions. The course starts with the basics of computer science and computer programming. After a short introduction to computer organization, the principles of structured programming in Java are presented. The main topics covered are data types and variables, methods, conditional statements, loops, and recursion. Finally, the course introduces the object-oriented features of Java and their usage for program design. All these concepts have to be understood both from their theoretical perspective and their practical applications.

This course explores theories of justice. It does this by engaging in a discussion with one of the most rewarding authors on how to interpret and understand theories of justice: Michael J. Sandel. In JUSTICE. WHAT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO? he introduces a selective number of theories of justice, from classical to modern and contemporary thinkers that can be used to better understand contested issues such as surrogate motherhood, equal rights, obligations regarding poverty eradication, and all kinds of everyday ethical dilemmas. The book of Sandel is supplemented with texts that highlight, criticize, or complement elements of the ethical theories as presented by Sandel. The course exists of a series of lectures as well as a series of seminars, meant to discuss and reflect upon the themes discussed in the book and the additional texts.

This course studies infectious diseases in a multidisciplinary way with a global public health emphasis. The first part introduces basic knowledge of the disease processes and the human immune responses. The second part focuses on three types of viruses that cause zoonotic infectious diseases in the modern era: retroviruses (i.e., HIV/AIDS), influenza viruses (i.e., H5N1, H1N1, H7N9), and coronaviruses (i.e., SARS, MERS, COVID-19). The focus of the discussion is on the biology of host-pathogen interactions, the basic epidemiology of infectious diseases, and possible countermeasures, including disease surveillance and vaccine development. The importance of social determinants of infectious diseases is also reviewed. The global impact of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will be explored in the third part of the course. Factors affecting drug use, both on macro and micro levels, are discussed and analyzed. The course ends by highlighting the "One Health" concept (i.e., human-animal-environment interfaces) in responding to zoonotic diseases and AMR.

This course covers the basic concepts and principles of the methods and techniques used in social neuroscientific research, which include electroencephalography, structural and functional neuroimaging, non-invasive brain stimulation, hormone administration, eye scanning, and measurements from the autonomic nervous system. This course provides a basis for other courses including neuropsychology, biological psychology, clinical and health psychology, cognitive neuropsychiatry, and cognitive neuroscience. The following topics are reviewed: functional electroencephalography, structural and functional neuroimaging, psychophysiology, non-invasive brain stimulation, psychoneuroendocrinology, and integrative neuroscience.

This course offers an introduction to the field of linguistics, the systematic study of language. The study of linguistics reflects a combination of reasoning found in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Students review key concepts, the analysis of human language properties, and empirical possibilities and impossibilities of natural language. The course examines a range of topics which include the definition of language, how language works, shared properties of language, how language is learned, outside influences on language, and language variation and change. This course consists of lectures, discussions, student presentations, and projects.