Netherlands

The world is becoming smaller. Different parts of the world are interacting with ever-greater intensity. Globalization and the changing balance of global power are prompting historians to explore history of other cultures and examine the mutual influences and relationships between various regions and cultures throughout history. This global perspective also affects our view of history and artefacts from the past. The course offers an introduction to this new and dynamic scientific discipline. Participants acquire the skills they need to effectively study visual cultures. Students also explore the histories of various cultures: East Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Amongst other issues, the course will focus on globalization, imperialism, cultural cross-fertilization, ethnocentrism, modernity and post-colonialism. Students practice interpreting visual sources and reflect on the way in which cultures are represented in museums and the academic world.

The mobility of people within and beyond national borders, both in real and virtual life, has created the need for people to understand and interact with others who have a different (cultural) background. In these new situations, individual identities and established “recipes” for (intercultural) interaction are challenged and contested, often requiring (re)construction and (re)negotiation, or even abandonment. Individuals must develop new ways of learning and interacting, and skills of adaptation and adjustment, to engage competently in intercultural encounters. This course develops students' knowledge about and experience in dealing with interculturality and intercultural communication. Students learn about the role of culture, language, and power and how they impact human communication, the complexity of identity, the causes and consequences of processes such as stereotyping, and how people manage intercultural communication processes in these new situations. However, competent intercultural communication is not only obtained for knowledge, students must experience directly how people act, interact, and communicate – from their perspective. In this course, students get opportunities to learn through experience. Class discussions, student-led case presentations and activities such as games are complemented by the critical analysis of traditional media and social media, enhancing awareness of values, norms, and biases. This prepares students to engage with “Cultural Others” through a virtual exchange project. This project is an international project called CONNECT GLOBAL. Finally, students learn to critically self-reflect on, and evaluate, their own intercultural competence. They reflect on intercultural exchanges and encounters in a reflective paper in which critically links the theories and notions learned in the course to personal experience.

In this course, well known philosophical texts are read and analyzed in detail. Reading philosophers, that is, the reading of some of their primary texts, is not just a pleasure in itself: the more interesting philosophers are also famous stylists. But it is also important to read texts instead of always relying on handbooks or (Internet) encyclopedia to acquaint oneself central ideas of philosophers. There is a lot to learn from reading philosophers themselves, how they position themselves in the tradition of philosophy and in the contemporary intellectual debate, to determine what interesting problems are, and how one could go about searching answers or even solutions. Reading philosophers themselves also has merit for another reason: it turns out philosophers use a variety of writing styles and publication media like a scientific treatise, monograph, an essay, a collection of aphorisms or a novel. And last but not least: they provide best introduction into some of the classical philosophical problems like: What can we know? should we valuate? What is justice? Is there something like moral sense? This course focuses on a group of six philosophers: Plato, Spinoza, Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, and Margalit. They are responsible for some of the philosophical work that has been produced in the western tradition.

International Humanitarian Law (IHL)– also known as “The Law of Armed Conflict” or “The Law of War” or “Jus in Bello”– regulates the conduct of soldiers and their commanders during wartime. IHL attempts to balance the principle of Military Necessity, the requirement that soldiers do their jobs so that armies can win battles and wars, and the principle of humanity, which attempts to reduce the suffering caused by war. Thus, IHL sets legal standards that attempt to regulate hostilities and protect innocent persons amid the ambiguity and brutality of combat. The course considers the following: what kinds of precautions must soldiers take before launching an attack that may injure civilians; if a civilian briefly picks up a weapon, can he or she be a lawful target; are commanders always responsible for war crimes committed by their subordinates; how do law, policy, and military imperatives combine to produce the difficult decisions that soldiers and commanders must make in the battlespace. This course uses realistic examples to assist students to understand not only how law is supposed to regulate armed conflict, but also how the law is applied during the chaos and stress of combat. Thus, the course combines theory and practice to illuminate issues and challenges that are alive today in places as diverse as Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Yemen, and Mali. Prerequisite for this course is an introduction to public international law.

The Presentation Skills training module gives students insight into many different aspects of presenting. This course makes students more aware of their strengths and weaknesses in presenting. Students receive feedback and tips in order to make presentations more effective. The types of presentations covered are: Pecha Kucha, Elevator Speech, and TED Talks.

This course provides students with advanced tools of game theory and shows the usefulness of this approach by analyzing several examples. This course is an intermediate course on game theory and strategic thinking. Concepts such as dominance, backward induction, Nash equilibrium, commitment, credibility, asymmetric information, adverse selection, and signaling are discussed, and applied to games played in class. Concepts are studied using examples of situations with conflicting interests drawn from economics, politics, business, and elsewhere. Game theory is a way of thinking about strategic situations. One aim of the course is to teach students some strategic considerations to take into account when making choices, specifically in situations of incomplete information. A second aim is to predict how other people or organizations behave when they are in strategic settings. Students learn new concepts, methods, and terminology. A third aim is to apply these tools to settings from economics, business, sociology, politics, and elsewhere. The course is problem driven (theory is taught by solving several problems). The mathematics required for this course does not go beyond calculus. Nonetheless, the ability to think mathematically and logically is a great asset.

This course provides an overview of the main developments in research centering on social networks which exists in the fields of sociology, economics, psychology, and anthropology. Important theories and theoretical aspects, which explain the emergence and the consequences of social networks, are discussed. This includes, for example the notion of the “strength of weak ties”, the focus theory, as well as different perspectives on centrality and how we are all connected. Finally, students read and discuss a number of research problems and topics on which social network studies focused. Examples of these topics are: social networks in organizations, online social networks, social networks and health, and negative social networks. The research questions underlying these topics are reconstructed and answers provided by empirical research are discussed. In addition, attention is paid to the different kinds of methods that can be used to collect network data as well as the analysis of such data. During the course, students choose a topic of their interest on which they write a paper in groups of two students). The papers consist of a review of the literature as well as an empirical study carried out by the students on the basis of this literature.

This course examines the relation between the normal functioning (physiology) and disease (pathophysiology) of seven basic organ systems: 1. heart and blood vessels (cardiology, arteriosclerosis), 2. lung (pulmonology), 3. kidney (nephrology), 4. gastro intestinal tract, 5. endocrine glands (endocrinology), 6. the central nervous system, and 7. the reproductive system. To demonstrate the relation between two or more organ systems, the course ends with a study of diabetes, which involves aspects of endocrinology and the cardiovascular and nervous system. Students complete several essays and oral presentations about an aspect of embryology, anatomy, physiology and pathophysiology, and report their findings to the class. The instructor demonstrates a real diagnosis at the University Hospital. Though the course does not emphasize clinical skills, students participate actively during this demonstration. Prerequisites for this course are Molecular Cell Biology and Human and Animal Biology.