Netherlands

The positive psychological movement formulated three aims: to focus on well-being and happiness instead of abnormal behavior and psychopathology; to be concerned with building positive qualities and strengths instead of repairing damage; to prevent future problems instead of correcting past and present problems. In this course, students unlock character strengths and focus on helpful ways to support themselves during difficult times. The course covers the most important theories in Positive Psychology and encourages students to search for scientific literature that applies the topics covered to their specific areas of interest. The course includes a combination of lectures, experiential workshops, group meetings, and self-study.

This course analyses European integration from the late 1940s until today. In a chronological order, it introduces students to themes such as security, economic integration, and enlargement that continue to influence European integration in the present. In parallel, it also provides an overview of the main theories explaining (aspects of) European integration related to these themes, including big theories such as neofunctionalism and neorealism, but also theories dealing with issues such as democratic legitimacy and the EU’s normative power. While firmly based in history, the sessions continuously seeks to also reflect on the relation between past processes and current developments, such as Brexit, or the Rule of law crisis, as they are unfolding. The course closes with a critical discussion on the main challenges European integration is faced with today and the views developed for its future development.

This version of the European Public Health in a Globalizing World course includes an Independent Study Project (ISP) done under the direction of the instructor. The ISP is 10-12 pages and counts for 1/3 of the overall grade for the course. The course provides an overview of modern health challenges in Europe and how they are shaped by a variety of themes within stakeholders in policy, research, and practice. Such themes include developing a unified system of population health monitoring across sovereign countries; coping with population aging and rising healthcare expenditures; managing commercial and social determinants of health; supporting cross-border collaboration between national health systems; fostering learning and the exchange of expertise in social and health policy; and identifying a global role for European Public Health. The current course combines theory with practice through lectures, tutorials, and a masterclass. Lectures introduce the content and initiate discussions on topics covered by the course. In addition, the course makes use of problem-based learning (PBL), a prominent learning method widely used at Maastricht University, in which students actively engage in their own learning. Finally, the course includes an exchange of views in the form of a masterclass with a senior expert in European health policy. To facilitate a fruitful learning environment a moderate level of health-related knowledge is required. Hence, the course is directed toward students attending bachelor or master's courses in medicine, public health science, sociology, anthropology, political science, or economics.

This course provides an overview of long-term developments in the world economy and reviews how the theoretical insights of social scientists help us to understand world history better. The main emphasis is on understanding the two main problems of social and economic history: what are the origins and drivers of economic growth, and why does that process result in wide disparities in wealth?  Students independently carry out a research project and acquire skills relating to social and economic historians, for example, source criticism, and working with data and theory.

This course examines historical knowledge about the process of productivity growth since the Middle Ages. It cover the standard neoclassical (Solow) growth model and some augmentations; basic endogenous growth models; and the process of productivity growth.

This course introduces basic economic ideas and concepts. Students analyze behavior on markets, outcomes of markets, and different market forms. Game theory is introduced to study situations with strategic interaction such as oligopolistic competition. Comparative advantage is used as an explanation of trade patterns. Macroeconomic indicators, economic fluctuations, and economic policy are reviewed. Monetary systems are covered in tutorials. Through presentations and special debates, tutorials provide the opportunity to apply and reflect on some of the contents of the course. The first part of the course mainly covers microeconomic topics and the second part is devoted to macroeconomics

Prerequisites: standard high school knowledge of basic mathematical concepts such as solving equations, reading and working with graphs, and manipulating inequalities is expected. In economics, no prior knowledge is assumed.

This course builds upon knowledge gained in introductory courses on functional programming, languages, and compilers. Using Haskell as the course's language of choice, students look at several advanced functional programming techniques, patterns, libraries, and tools. Course includes lectures, assignments, joint discussions, and programming exercise. Topics covered include: development of tools, testing, debugging and profiling; libraries of data structures, programming languages, monads, monad transformers, arrows, and applicative functors; language features and extensions of multi-parameter type classes and functional dependencies, type families, kinds, generalized algebraic data types (GADTs), existential types, and higher-rank polymorphism.