University College Cork

This course is an introduction to political philosophy with a special focus on modern society. Students look at how various political theories of democracy have emerged since the 17th century, and how they are now modified and/or challenged by some contemporary authors. 

Students study the application of statistical and computational methods to decision-making problems in management. Linear programming models for resource allocation; sensitivity analysis and duality; multiple management objectives using goal programming; network flow models for transportation, job-scheduling and inventory management; integer linear programming; network-representations; resource-levelling and time-cost tradeoffs, stochastic optimization. 

The course focuses on the natural world and our relationship with it. It offers an in-depth exploration of topics in environmental geography, focusing on the biological, chemical, and physical processes that sustain life on Earth, human impacts on these processes, and strategies for mitigating environmental damage. Students engage with concepts of sustainability, conservation, and environmental policy. Topics include biodiversity loss, water, air and soil pollution, climate change, land modifications, environmental technologies, environmental policies and management decisions. By fostering critical thinking and problem-solving skills, the course prepares students to contribute positively to environmental conservation, policy development, and sustainable management practices in various sectors.

Students study memory systems, language comprehension and production, thinking and reasoning, problem solving, decision making and creativity as well as examples of applications of the contribution of these processes in understanding real-life applied situations (e.g. driving; food choices; navigating the environment; etc.). The applied settings also relate to perception and attention. Students learn how to describe the memory systems and demonstrate an understanding of speech and language production and comprehension. They explain thinking and reasoning and their fallacies. This course teaches students to describe and critically evaluate the contribution of cognitive psychology in explaining real-life situations. 

The extremes of human experience have been contemplated by Eastern and Western thinkers beyond traditional philosophic categories of logic, epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics in a movement we refer to as "existentialism". In this course, students explore Western existential philosophers such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, de Beauvoir, Sartre, and Heidegger, as well as existential aspects of Asian philosophies such as Buddhism, Daoism, and the Kyoto School writings of Nishitani Keiji. Students also read the works of existential literary figures, such as Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Camus, Oe, or Kawabata. 

In this course, students identify and discuss the importance of the Roman Republic on contemporary debates in political philosophy, and in particular to understand the contribution of Cicero to Western philosophy. The focus of this course is the last 100 years of the Roman Republic, and in particular the philosophical works of Cicero. Students examine Cicero's writings on a range of philosophical topics, friendship, moral duties, old age, and death. 

This course is an introductory survey of the major schools of Chinese Philosophy.  Students begin their exploration of Chinese thought with a reading of Confucius’ Analects where they focus on central concepts such as “filial piety”, “ritual propriety”, “rectification of names”, “mandate of heaven”, and “benevolence”.  Students also explore the two main Daoist classics, the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, considering such concepts as “non-action”, “non-speaking”, “emptiness/absence” and theories of relativism, perspectivism and non-attachment. This course is also dedicated to introducing the four main schools of Chinese Buddhism; Chan, Huayen, T'ian Tai, and Mind-Only and their contrasting ideas of enlightenment, emptiness, truth, and co-dependent origination.

This course introduces students to the critical potential of "everyday lived experience" as a radically different approach to psychological research and practice that provides a link between psychology and social theory. Introduction to psychology of everyday lived experience; concepts such as lived experience, voice, values, subject position, participation; ethnography of lived experience as researching with the other; case studies such as children living in a debt economy, the everyday experience of being a migrant, digital technology and the transformation of everyday living, everyday caring, etc. Case studies vary from year to year.

This course is an introduction to the rich history of medieval manuscripts with a particular emphasis on Irish codices. Themes include medieval manuscript culture and codex production; insular scripts and scribal techniques; Late Medieval and humanist scripts; the Corpus of Medieval Irish manuscripts; Modern Irish manuscript tradition; digital technology and manuscript research.