University College Dublin

Dublin is one of Europe's oldest and greatest historic cities, and one of the fastest-growing. This course explores that long history, from the late first millennium AD when Vikings began a formal process of settlement to the early 21st century when global migration patterns enlarged its population and enriched its culture. The course focuses on the city's history as represented in its layout and physical fabric, two concerns of interest to archaeologists. It is intended to inform students about Dublin's history, but it also to equip them to read the evidence for that history in the physical character of the city. The course has three main components: the medieval city (to 1600), the early modern city (1600-1800), the modern and contemporary city (1800 to the present).

The course introduces and develops an understanding of American modernism, both in terms of the particularities of American culture in the early 20th century, and in relation to its complex relationship with Europe. Particular attention is paid to concepts of race/ethnicity, gender, politics, and social activism as ways of emphasizing the plurality of American modernism, as well as the diverse aesthetic forms which give it expression. In its geographical reach, the course encompasses writing from the American West, rural Wisconsin, New York (from Harlem to the Jewish American community of the Lower East Side), and expatriate experience in post-war Britain. At the core of the course is an exploration of the complex, shifting and dynamic nature of American Modernism, both in terms of the creative output of its writers, and in relation to the critics and theorists who attempt to define it.

This course traces both the development of English literature and the development of Medieval English society, through the transition from a shame culture to a guilt culture. Students read a selection of outstanding literary works of the early and late medieval period. Beginning with some Old English literature in translation, students consider the heroic ethos and its consequences for personal relationships and societal structures. The course then looks at a variety of key Middle English texts, including some works by Marie de France, Chaucer, and the Pearl-poet, tracing first the transition to feudalism and later the medieval rise of the middle class.

This course examines the practice of folk medicine in Ireland, in the past and in the present. Irish popular tradition includes a great richness of material on this subject, encompassing a wide range of healing agents and media, from botanical remedies to prescribed rituals and actions, and from specific locations to particular individuals who were credited with special powers. The importance of ritual behavior will be examined, as will the position of the healer in the community. The course looks at what we might learn about the dynamics of popular tradition, and the ways in which popular tradition functions, from an examination of folk healing practices. The remarkable resilience of many such practices is also explored. 

Hundreds of myths and sagas survive from medieval Ireland. Many of these display intricate narrative techniques and structures, and their contents often reflect contemporary ideologies as well as inherited mythological motifs. In this course, students focus on one specific long narrative from the early Middle Ages and conduct a thorough and critical analysis of the text. No knowledge of Old Irish is required, as students read the story in full in English translation, but throughout the course key Irish terms and concepts are examined and their significance explained. 

The Irish geological record contains over a billion years of Earth history preserving memories of the uplift of Himalayan-sized mountains, volcanic eruptions, warm tropical seas, and polar ice caps. This course introduces through field classes and online material how we can interpret the ancient rock record to reveal the past, and explore the links between the bedrock beneath us and today’s landscape and society. Students visit sites of outstanding geological interest and beautiful scenery in North and South County Dublin. Students are required to attend field classes, and the dates of field classes cannot be changed.

This course provides a comprehensive exploration of the principles and applications of building energy systems. The course is for students in engineering and architecture, focusing on the intersection of energy efficiency, electrical systems, and building design. Topics include building energy analysis, psychrometrics, steady state and seasonal analysis, electricity supply system, electrical services in buildings, lightning protection.

This course introduces the concepts behind the analysis of renewable energy systems. Choice awareness of energy systems are considered in the uptake of renewable energy systems. The fundamentals of generation, cogeneration, and tri-generation are explored for low-carbon/renewable energy systems. Methods and tools for hybrid energy systems integration and optimization to provide specified service loads (electricity, heating, and cooling) are applied considering energy flows, energy systems integration, and bases for sustainable energy systems. Design and analyses of renewables is based on special purpose computer tools with capability for integration of renewable energy resources and/or conversion technologies for multiple energy systems/sectors including energy demand and supply modelling.

This course investigates how earth scientists reconstruct past climates, and demonstrate, using selected case studies, what drives climate change and how ecosystems respond to these forcing factors. Upon successful completion of the course, students are able to understand the various sources of sedimentological, chemical, and biological data (proxies) earth and environmental scientists use to reconstruct ancient environments and climates, with particular emphasis on environmental reconstructions using microfossils and isotopic data; the basic principles of stratigraphy; how changes in sedimentary sequences over time record phenomena such as changes in sea level, and astronomical forcing of climate; and a series of key events involving global environmental change that are recorded in the geological record of Ireland (including snowball Earth events, carboniferous palaeoenvironments, and landscape evolution over the past few thousand years). This course is taught online. 

In this course, students learn the fundamentals of spatial information, spatial querying, spatial information systems, and geometric problems involved in a spatial information system. They learn details about the spatial data formats (raster and vector), spatial relations (with particular emphasis on topological relations), spatial data structures, digital terrain modelling, geometric problems arising in spatial information systems, and algorithms to solve them. They develop a critical understanding of the different approaches to storing and manipulating spatial data: the loosely coupled approach of classical GIS versus the integrated approach of spatial database management systems. Students also analyze the Oracle Spatial object-relational model for storing and indexing spatial data. These notions complement their knowledge of other types of information systems seen in other computer science courses.