Netherlands

The course discusses the principles of genetics with application to the study of biological function at the level of molecules, cells, and multicellular organisms, including humans. The topics include the structure and function of genes; chromosomes and genomes; biological variation resulting from replication and recombination, mutation and selection; DNA repair and the genetic basis of disease inheritance. The following topics are covered as well: the chemical structure of DNA and the molecular mechanisms of DNA replication; the basic principles how information stored in genes is converted to a (cellular) phenotype in the form of RNA and protein; the concepts of genome structure, comparative genomics, and functional genomics; the molecular basis of single gene inheritance (Mendel's first law), sex-linked single gene inheritance and, human pedigrees; the concepts of Darwin's theory of Natural Selection, molecular evolution, and the origin of new genes and species. The prerequisite course is Cell Biology.

This course is a systematic examination of current scholarly debates about vulnerability and care, using gender as analytic lens. Against the dominant liberal premise of individual autonomy, this course explores the fundamental inter-dependence and eco-dependence character of sociality and individuality. Gender is approached from different perspectives ranging from feminism to ecofeminism, including post-structuralist and post-humanist thinkers. The aim of the course is to engage in these scholarly debates in connection to concrete case-studies and the ethical dilemmas derived from them.

This course focuses on the relationship between welfare state development and social change, in the past and the present, in the Netherlands and abroad. It addresses the origins of the welfare state, its various components and their organization, and its transformation in our time in relation to processes of social change.

The first part of this course serves as an introduction to the general characteristics and typology of arguments. Furthermore, students learn how arguments can be standardized and how argumentative structures can be visualized by drawing patterns. This part of the course also contains an introductory lecture, entitled “Standardizing Arguments”. In part two, an informal but systematic method for evaluating the quality of arguments, the ARG method, is introduced. During this part of the course an introduction to bad arguments, so-called fallacies, is provided as well. A lecture on evaluating arguments accompanies this part of the course. In the third part, the knowledge and skills provided in the first two parts are applied to complete texts, seeking to isolate the arguments they present systematically and evaluate whether or not they are good arguments. In part four, standardization and patterns of arguments, as well as the ARG method, are used to construct arguments. Furthermore, students practice how the skills learned throughout the course can be applied to writing academic papers. Students considering enrolling for the skill training in argumentation should be aware that the course does not focus on rhetoric and debating skills (although it can be assumed that the analytical skills acquired in this course will be helpful for debates). Prerequisite: Students who take the course need to have written at least one academic paper.

One of the tools required in order to successfully interpret a medieval Celtic text, is to know as much as possible about the circumstances under which it was produced. This historicist approach is common in the field of Celtic studies. In the first four lectures of this course, students are given a brief overview of medieval Irish literature; medieval Irish history; medieval Welsh literature, and medieval Welsh history. After this, important concepts and themes relating to medieval Welsh and Irish history and literature are examined, compared, and contrasted. This is done by reading background literature, and by closely analyzing texts relating to a particular weekly topic, for example the king, the hero, the role of women, the role of the poet, the saint, and children.

This course is directed at understanding specific air quality issues in 3 themes: 1) at the global 2) regional and 3) local (urban) scale. At each scale, the focus is understanding the life cycle of natural and anthropogenic air pollutants, i.e., the processes behind emission, transport in the atmosphere, chemical conversions, and deposition on the land/ocean surface. The role of meteorology on air pollution mixing and transport is explicitly explained on each scale. The course pays attention to the effects on human and environmental health, as well as the feasibility of alternatives and the efficiency of regulation and policy. On the global scale, the focus is on tropospheric chemistry, the greenhouse effect, and stratospheric ozone. On the regional scale, the focus is on the deposition of air pollutants (clouds, precipitation, wet deposition, dry deposition), acidification, and eutrophication, with ample examples by means of the nitrogen cycle. At the local scale, the focus is on traffic and industrial emissions, the role of vegetation, and photochemical smog. Each theme is completed with a tutorial, in which problem-solving is practiced as exam training.

Comparative politics aims to explain differences between and similarities among countries and utilizes comparison as a tool for social science research to understand broader trends in world politics.  The course draws from both theoretical work and country and regional case studies that cover both advanced industrialized and developing world states. The core question comparative politics ask is "why politics is different across countries"?  Questions explored in this course include: What explains democratization? Are countries with prime ministers more stable than ones in which the president heads the executive branch? Why do some countries have extensive welfare states while others do not? Are multi-ethnic societies more or less prone to civil wars? Why are some countries poorer than others?