University College Dublin

This course introduces students to a variety of sociological debates that surround the human body. It explores various theoretical perspectives of how we experience and live in our bodies, including theories by Foucault, Elias, Goffman, Judith Butler and others. It focuses on the roles our bodies are prescribed to, or play in our everyday interactions, and how they are socially constructed. Main topics range from exploring the mind/body relationship, the historical accounts of how attitudes to our bodies have been changing, the politics of the body, including gender and racial inequalities, disabilities, medicalization and commodification of bodies, and also the processes behind sexualzation, ageing, and dying.

This course offers an exploration of the derivation, development, and practice of Irish foreign, security, and defense policies, with a particular focus on contemporary challenges. Students gain a detailed insight into Ireland's place in the contemporary world order, the transformation of Irish national foreign, security, and defense policy through its membership of the European Union, and the efforts of Irish policy makers to pursue Irish interests and values within an evolving global order. This includes an analysis of Irish foreign policy strategy, policy making, and economic, political, and military engagement. This course provides a solid theoretical and empirical grounding for further advanced study, and encourages students to compare and to evaluate critically competing understandings of Ireland in the world.

This course shows how the Irish landscape can be read as a document in which are locked many clues about Irish identity: ancient, medieval, and modern. The course focuses on the idea of heritage: cultural landscape as a key element of Irish heritage. The course is conducted exclusively in the field and through online work. Students visit Wicklow, Carlow, and Meath, and also use course materials to conduct self-led excursions around Dublin. This course is for students who are new to Ireland and largely unfamiliar with Irish archaeology and Irish history.

This course provides an overview of key environmental challenges and explores the potential impact of these on human populations over coming decades, e.g. climate change, degradation of soil and water resources, and loss of biodiversity. The evolution of the farmed landscape is explored and the impacts of modern agricultural systems discussed. The role of biodiversity in terms of facilitating ecosystem services that underpin agricultural production systems is explored. Key policy and legislative initiatives that impact on agricultural production systems and the agri-environment are outlined and suggestions regarding changes that need to be made to facilitate sustainable food production systems are presented.

This course provides students with an understanding of operations and supply chain management (SCM) within a contemporary business and global context. Operations management processes convert inputs of materials and resources into added value outputs, and distributes these outputs to its customers. The topics include an introduction to operations and supply chain management (SCM); the input sources (suppliers); the conversion process and distribution/logistics to customers; the management of procurement, sourcing, selection, and suppliers; inventory management; facility location; process systems and layout; capacity planning and demand management and scheduling; the concepts of "lean" organizations, JIT, and TQM; the strategic role of operations management in an organization's competitive success; understanding product/process costs; technology; and the role of innovation in gaining cost and other competitive advantages.

This course gives students a broad overview of the key concepts and therapeutic processes of the major approaches in counseling psychology. Theoretical constructs of how psychological disturbance are acquired and maintained, the goals of therapy, key therapeutic techniques, and the therapeutic relationship are explored across these approaches. Lecture sessions are highly participatory and case studies and video clips showing master practitioners are used to illustrate the therapeutic process.

This course examines the complex relationships between war, violence, and society. The course explores the sociological aspects of traditional and modern forms of organized violence in a comparative historical perspective. The course is particularly focused on the theoretical and socio-historical interpretations that link war and organized violence with the development of modern societies. More specifically, the emphasis is placed on the dramatic and radical changes in the relationship between war, organized violence, and society over the last two centuries. The course examines the significance of war and violence as a source of social cohesion and conflict, their role in the formation of modernity and contemporary nation-states, their link with the nationalist ideologies, and a number of more specific topics such as war propaganda and battlefield solidarity, war and social stratification, gendering of war, as well as the changing character of warfare and violence in the 21st century.

This course introduces students to avant-garde theater makers and performance artists of the 20th century whose interrogation of the function and possibilities of performance influenced many artists working in theater and performance today. Through case studies that present the works in performance of a number of significant theater artists and theorists across the 20th century, students are introduced to relevant theoretical discourses of performance analysis, and taught to examine and reflect critically on performances and productions of leading and influential practitioners, and consider in addition, how these performances operate within relevant artistic, aesthetic, and ideological contexts.

Analytical sociology is a strategy for understanding the social world. It is concerned with explaining important macro-level facts such as the diffusion of various social practices, patterns of segregation, network structures, typical beliefs, and common ways of acting through the micro-level interactions of individuals. This course covers topics such as the whole and the parts, wisdom of the crowds, social influence, success-breeds-success dynamics, prevalence of norms that nobody wants, contagion of crime, social echo chambers, opinion polarization, segregation dynamics, and social networks.