University College Dublin

This course explores developmental themes that occur across different stages of life from birth and infancy through adulthood and into old age. Although development at each stage of life has unique features, there are also important themes that recur across the lifespan. The course draws on ecological theory and the lifespan perspective to organize our understanding of these developmental themes including physical growth and aging, health and wellness, attachment, cognition, moral development, personality and self, gender and sexuality, parenting, and death and dying. The course draws on an assigned textbook as well as on readings from international, peer reviewed literature.

This course explores how digital technologies and networked culture are influencing our sense of self and community, from the crafting and presentation of personal identity to the empowerment of individual voices to create and incite change, and to the curational practices of the self that have formed within the sphere of digital marketing. The course discusses digital media theories and the impacts of social media interactions on issues of representation, self-perception, and cultural understandings in society. The course provides the necessary scholarship for digital media studies, with an emphasis of analysis on what people say on social media, what they do through their digital interactions, and how the technology is implicated in the way certain discourses, presentations, and cultural views are consolidated in contemporary society, particularly amongst minority communities.

War is as old as mankind, but it has changed its character over the centuries. This course introduces students to the changing character of war from ancient times to the present, highlighting the latest research results on a large variety of conflicts and themes: wars, piracy and civil wars in the ancient world, the Viking conquests in Europe, the Crusades, the Wars of Religion, the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century and the American Civil War to the total wars of the 20th century. The course takes an interdisciplinary perspective on war, combining insights from history, classics, politics , medicine, and sociology. Together, faculty from these diverse disciplines introduce some of the latest cutting edge research on violence and gender, medical responses to the outbreaks of war, and the "new wars" on terror in today's Middle East.

Distribution is a key technology for constructing systems that can scale to meet high demand (such as web applications) or which are required to operate over large geographical areas (such as sensor networks). Understanding how to do this effectively is an important challenge in computer science, especially given the continued emergence of systems that are required to handle millions of concurrent users where fluctuations in demand require the addition or removal of hundreds of servers at any point in time. This course explores this space from a practical perspective. Students learn about and use a range of distribution techniques. They explore the state-of-the-art and key theoretical issues by reviewing academic articles on some of the most successful solutions and presenting their findings to their peers. A final project allows the students to apply these techniques through the development of a significant application.

Why are some countries rich, and some countries poor? What are the political consequences of the eurozone crisis? To what extent is socio-economic inequality shaping electoral politics today? This course introduces students to the politics of socio-economic inequality in advanced capitalist societies. The focus of the course is on the different ways in which governments have sought to promote economic growth and redistribute resources in favor of different political interests. The course presents key concepts and theories in the study of capitalist development, and uses these to explain economic inequality in Europe and the USA. Key themes include the politics of inequality, globalization, technology, democracy, social class, the influence of business power over public policy, the international financial crisis, populism, nationalism, and the eurozone crisis.

This course examines the overlap between theories and research within criminology and within psychology in order to examine the concept of crime from an inter-disciplinary perspective. Rather than being a course in forensic psychology, it offers a critique of the potential of such an approach. Gender disparities in offending, the efficacy of drug criminalization, and psychological aspects of the criminal justice system such as eyewitness testimony and jury decision-making are covered, as are sensitive topics, such as recidivism among child sex offenders and intervention with offenders.

This course provides a survey of the history of western art music from 1600 to 1750. The course offers a narrative overview of the period and discusses developments in their historical, social, and cultural contexts while examining compositional techniques, styles, and genres. Among the issues identified for discussion are the invention of Opera, the rise of instrumental music, and Baroque genres and style culminating in the vocal and instrumental music of Bach and Handel. The course focuses, in particular, on music in Italy, France, and Germany and the relationships between these traditions.

Ireland is in a state of ongoing transformation, experiencing rapid and dramatic economic, social, and cultural changes in a short period of time. Yet there are structural continuities traced back to modern Irish society before and after independence that underlie and help to explain these changes. This course explores the continuities amidst the significant changes in contemporary Irish society drawing on a comparative perspective. This provides a framework to identify what is similar to the continuities and changes in Ireland compared to other related societies, and what is different in the Irish experience contrasted with other societies. Topics include periods of boom and bust in Ireland's development, particularly the Celtic Tiger and current austerity; population, emigration, and immigration; inequality, poverty, and class; housing; education; labor markets; social networks; religion and secularization; pluralism and liberalization; consumerism and individualism; the media; social movements; and nationalism and national identity.