University College Dublin

What is it like to be a child and grow up in Ireland today? What rights do children in Ireland have, and why do rights matter? This course addresses questions like these, and introduces some of the key issues relating to childhood and children's rights in Ireland and in comparison with other countries. Students examine the meaning of childhood from different perspectives; children as rights holders; and children's agency, participation, voice, and citizenship. Students critically reflect on their own beliefs and understandings of the status of children and young people and question the extent to which children's rights are realized in different settings and in different cultures and societies.

This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary subject of social justice and equips them with the conceptual tools to look critically at the world we live in and the different ways in which knowledge about it is produced. We live in a world divided by various forms of injustice – in which some kinds of people and some ways of looking at the world are privileged while others are marginalized. Throughout this course, students explore what is meant by social justice and social injustice and draw on a range of perspectives to assist in thinking analytically and critically about various forms of injustice and how these can be addressed. The course is divided into two key themes. In the first part of the course, the main focus is on exploring the key concepts related to social justice and social injustice and using these both to examine some concrete examples of injustice and to think about how to create a more socially just world. In the second part of the course, the focus is on knowledge, looking critically at the production of knowledge about social issues and problems and thinking about what it means to apply a social justice perspective to the study of the social world.

This course investigates the origins and evolution of the British empire, from the early adventurers' journeys of exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries to the zenith of British dominion over large areas of the globe in the early 20th century. Throughout the course, emphasis is placed on themes such as exploration, trade, slavery, war, humanitarianism, and culture and cultural exchange in relation to the emergence and expansion of the empire. Issues regarding the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized and the center and periphery are explored, along with examination of the various ways in which the empire was represented through media such as print, art, cartography, and music.

Students engage with the historiography of 20th-century genocide, political violence, warfare, and civil war, as well as reading and viewing a range of primary sources including victim and perpetrator testimonies, trial records, and documentary film. Was the 20th century uniquely violent? If so, why? This course explores the question of genocide and mass violence in the 20th-century world. In this course, students engage with theories of genocide and political violence, and also examine the validity of these explanations for the causes and consequences of mass violence by examining four case studies in depth. Looking at Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the period of the First World War, Jews on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, and Rwanda in 1994, students discuss a range of questions: What is the context for these acts of mass violence? Who were the perpetrators of these acts? Who were the victims? Why did they happen at this time and in this place, and not at another time? What was the tipping point between persecution or repression and mass murder? What was the role of belief or ideology? Did the geopolitical situation in each time and place matter? What were the roles of individuals, groups, and the state?

This course explores how archaeologists discover, investigate, and engage with archaeological landscapes. Through lectures and discussions, the first part of this course provides students with an understanding of the role of different methods and techniques in modern archaeological practice and approaches to landscape archaeology. The course then provides a chronological discussion of Irish archaeology using landscape-themed worked examples from Ireland and places them in their international context. Lectures cover the use of cartographic sources, aerial photographs, lidar, geophysical surveys, and other remote sensing methods, and the investigation of site-level and landscape-scale remains as explored by a series of worked examples. A staff-led fieldtrip allows students to better understand the concept of landscape and provides training for the end of semester project. The primary assessment requires students to complete an archaeological study which combines field, library, and desk-based research to explore a landscape of their own choosing. This encourages students to experience research and develop skills needed to work independently.

Many undergraduate courses relate to politics itself—about politics in different regions, or about particular aspects of political systems. This course, however, is about political science, about doing research on politics and in the social sciences more generally. How do we design our research? How do we collect data? How do we draw valid conclusions from these data? While the focus in many other courses is on knowledge of theories and knowledge of political systems, as well as basic analytical and critical skills, this course provides students with relevant practical skills and increased analytical skills. While there is a more in-depth exploration of survey research methods and the visual inspection of survey results, this functions as an example to the core components of the course. Other topics include practical and ethical considerations of political research, general types of research design, core elements of any research design, and a brief overview of the main methods in use in political science today. Special attention is paid to writing and reading political science research.

Research methods are central to the undergraduate curriculum in many subjects and disciplines. This course introduces students to the basic principles underpining research enquiry in psychology. Students learn about commonly used quantitative and qualitative methodologies and designs. In addition, the course introduces students to basic descriptive statistics, for example levels of measurement, properties of the normal curve, measures of central tendency, and variation and correlation. Students should note that a key feature of this course is attendence and participation in classroom discussion and skills-based activities related to the learning outcomes.

This interdisciplinary course focuses on place, people, and identity in Ireland, through its history, literature, and film. The course covers representations from the late 19th century to the present. The growth of distinctive urban cultures and rural cultures, and their role in the shaping of identity debates within Ireland, is of particular importance. The course also examines emigration and the diaspora (specifically in the US), and the ways in which identity structures are effected and affected by migration, displacement, and exile.

This course is about arguments, rhetoric, nonsense talk, lies, biases, and paradoxes. In the first part of the course, students learn about arguments: what they are, and what makes them good or bad. Students learn how to pick apart an argument in order to assess if the conclusion should be accepted. In the second part of the course, students learn about rhetoric, nonsense talk, and lies. Students also think about poor reasoning as a result of cognitive biases. Finally, students consider paradoxes such as that generated by the statement "This sentence is not true."