Netherlands

This course offers an introductory study of ancient history, focusing on the Ancient Near East and Greco-Roman antiquity. The course explores the main political, socio-economic, and cultural developments in this epoch between ca. 800 BCE and 500 CE. The course utilizes textbooks, visuals, tutorials, ancient sources, and modern literature in order to offer insight into current scientific debates and to examine specific themes in Greek and Roman history. The course consists of lectures, seminar discussions, assignments, and group work.

The purpose of this course is to provide an overview of the various economic fields by investigating these fields in their historical and methodological context and the linkages between these different fields and to other related sciences.

In this course, aspects of quantity and quality of water are studied at the sub-catchment scale both in theory and in field and laboratory practices. Students learn to apply computational methods in hydrology and chemical & biological measuring techniques as applied in analyses of surface water systems and water quality. The course covers definitions, concepts, processes, flow equations, systems analysis, and (sub-)catchment modeling approaches, measuring methods, and quantification of elements. Specific topics are relationships between landscape morphology and water quality, hydrological cycle (precipitation, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, groundwater), the interaction of groundwater and surface water, (drainage theory, design discharge, dimensioning of drainage and discharge systems, rainfall-runoff relationships in catchments), characterization of water types and aquatic ecosystems by chemical and biological field measurements (nutrients, chloride, alkalinity, oxygen, light absorption, composition of macro-fauna), experimental analysis of eutrophication processes in the laboratory.

This course is meant for anyone interested in alternative forms of organizing in a constantly changing world. The course takes a political perspective on the phenomenon of organizing in order to make sense of both dominant bureaucratic organizations traditionally based on rationality, control and efficiency, and emerging alternative organizations that emphasize participation, democracy and autonomy. Applying a critical management approach, the course examines the contextual forces (e.g. globalization) and societal challenges (e.g. climate change) facing organizations today; the assumptions underlying current logics of organizing, taking the case of the sharing economy and questioning to what extent it can be considered an alternative are explored. Lastly, the course elaborates on the principles and practices associated with other forms of ‘alternative’ organizations and organizing, from social enterprises to cooperatives and social movements. In the second part of the course, students perform a small-scale field study with a subgroup, engaging with a so called ‘alternative’ organization/grassroots’ community/social movement to better explore their organizational functioning. This is a high intensity level 3 course. Active participation forms the backbone of this course.

This course introduces mathematical and programming skills that are employed by researchers in the Molecular and Biophysical Life Sciences to analyze and integrate data and to understand the physics of living systems. The course is divided into two parts that run in parallel. The mathematics part of the course consists of nine lectures that cover: basic algebra, goniometry, differentiation and integration (including functions of multiple variables), limits, (partial) differential equations (first order and second order), Taylor expansion, basic probability theory and statistics and vectors (including dot product and cross product). Each lecture is followed by a supervised practical session. The programming part consists of six lectures that introduce the basics of programming by discussing the modulare structure of programs (modules, functions, loops), different data types and variables, as well as good practices. For some calculations of the mathematics part of the course it is explained how to perform those calculations using Python. After each lecture, students work individually on a series of practical coding assignments that familiarize them with the basics of programming in Python during supervised tutorials, where regular instruction and feedback is provided.

This course traces the main historical contexts in which democracy has emerged as an idea, practice, and set of institution. Main thinkers on democracy are read and discussed on the basis of primary sources. Their ideas are interpreted in the historical context of transforming practices and institutional change. Historical explanations and philosophical interpretations of democratization and de-democratization are analyzed in their interaction.

In this course the views of a number of classical thinkers on capitalism will be discussed: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Friedrich Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman and Thomas Piketty. What was, in their view, the nature of capitalism? Which problems does the system have? And how should these shortcomings be remedied?

This course reviews one of the most influential periods of English literature: the Renaissance. A wide range of literary texts, including poetry, drama and prose are studies. How the language and form of these texts were shaped by (international) religious, cultural, and political contexts are explored.