University of Bologna

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. This course focuses on the awareness of the information and communication technologies (ICTs) and of their socio-economic impacts; awareness of main issues pertaining to the regulation of ICTS; knowledge of emerging aspects of European ICT Law; awareness the basic principles and issues on e-government, e-governance, and e-democracy; knowledge of the legal regulation of ICTs in the Europe; and awareness the Digital Agenda for Europe framework. The course discusses risks and opportunities of ICTs and addresses legal issues pertaining to ICTs in a European and comparative perspective. The course is divided into two parts. Part one is on Computable Law: legal retrieval systems, man-made models, and machine learning systems. Part two is on legal issues of AI and autonomous systems.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. The course provides advanced knowledge on US foreign policy from 1945 until the election of Donald Trump. Examining the role of the United States within the international system, at the end of the course students are able to: describe the different historical phases of US foreign policy; detect the multiple political, geopolitical, and economic factors that have affected the development of US foreign policy; analyze the transitional moments and the turning points in the evolution of US foreign policy; and understand the link between domestic and foreign policy. The course examines the history of United States foreign relations – broadly defined – from the end of second world war to the election of Donald Trump. Examining the US role and place in the world, specific questions are raised and discussed, including: what triggered the American hegemonic rise; how do we conceptualize the response to the deployment of America’s multifaceted global power; and how do we investigate the connection between domestic politics and foreign policy choices? The course considers the impact of the political, geopolitical, and economic transformations of the past century on the foreign policy choices and particular attention is paid to specific turning points and transition moments (i.e.: the modernization policy of the Sixties, the crisis of the Seventies, the end of the Cold War, 9/11, and the war on terrorism). After a broad introductory lecture on the origins of United States foreign policy, the course follows a chronological pattern. Historiographical debates and issues are also thoroughly discussed and examined, starting from the current debate on the end of the American century.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. There are two versions of this course; this course, UCEAP Course Number 152A and Bologna course number 90543, is associated with the LM in Sociology and Social Work degree programme. The other version, UCEAP Course Number 152B and Bologna course number 93217, is associated with the LM in Geography and Territorial Processes degree programme.

At the end of the course, students are able to: have a general overview of international migrations, their main interpretative models, and some related issues; and manage the main concepts for the study of migrations, without limiting to the classic economy and the demography ones, but paying attention also to some most recent approaches. The course provides the main conceptual and analytical tools for a sociological analysis of migrations, presenting the most accredited interpretation models, the most recent trends, and the social impact of this phenomenon in the Mediterranean area. The first part of this course considers the figure of the stranger and the interaction models with society as it emerges from the classical sociological debate (Simmel, Park, Thomas). The second part introduces the contemporary debate on international migrations and the interpretation models of this phenomenon from different disciplines. Special attention is given to: 1. theoretical contributions from the Chicago School of sociology in the 1920s; 2. considering migrations as a "total social fact," according to the Algerian sociologist A. Sayad; and 3. interethnic and cohabitation relations in urban settings. During the Laboratory experts and workers of the socio-sanitary field present their professional experience, in order to enlarge the debate with students about the main issues of the course of sociology of migrations.

The course focuses on issues, historical contexts, and social aspects of Spanish culture. Emphasis is placed on socio-cultural issues related to culture and the critical tools necessary for contextualizing, analyzing, and commenting on texts and documents in order to relate them to the most significant transformations in the areas of language reference. The course focuses on the analysis of excerpts of a selection of literary texts as well as documentaries of the time. Specific course topics vary each term. Access the University of Bologna Online Course Catalog for the most up to date topic for the course. The topic for Fall 2023 is the Re-elaborations and Cultural Transformations through the 20th Century and the Contemporary World. Specific topics covered include the Second Republic; the Civil War and the Francoist Repression; and the transition to democracy. The course focuses on how to retell history from realism to postmodernism and neo-modernity, and how historical memory is presented through different genres including theater and literature. The course also focuses on debates regarding ethical questions including collective memory, forgetting and recognition, reparation and post-memory, individual rights, and mass education. The analysis is based on images, sound documents, fragments of historical and philosophical essays, newspapers, and documentaries of the period.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. This course examines: the conceptual and theoretical foundations of cybercrime research; the cutting edge empirical research on cybercrimes; the main tools and practices related to the prevention and countering of cybercrimes, and to their harm mitigation; the social challenges and implications of digitalization and datafication in the context of cybercrime research and investigations; and develops an approach to cybercrimes that recognizes the cross-disciplinary nature of the area. The course discusses topics including approaching and researching crime in cyberspace; crimes against devices; crime against persons; crimes of deception and coercion; intellectual property infringement; market-based crimes; political offences; cyberterrorism and radicalization; information pollution; disrupting and preventing cybercrimes; crimes of the present, crimes of the future; and researching crime in cyberspace.

The course introduces students to pivotal and methodological issues in the field of cultural anthropology. Topics change on a yearly basis. The Spring 2023 topic was: The Gift in the Greek and Roman World: Economy, Society, and Religion. The course includes a series of guest lectures. The course is graded pass/no pass only.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. This course provides knowledge on process and Quaternary geomorphology, with a focus on mountain environments. The course examines aspects of sediment supply and sediment transfer, including hillslope-channel interactions, the role of hydro-meteorogical forcing on the intensity and typology geomorphic transport processes. It also deals with sediment management in the Anthropocene, including the impacts of in-channel engineering infrastructures and landcover changes. Sediment yield and sediment storage in natural and regulated systems are also discussed, as well as the role of Pleistocene glaciations on the present spatial organization of geomorphic processes and sediment fluxes. In this context, the course further examines dating landforms and constraining denudation rates at millennial time scales. The lab-based component introduces students to expert-based mapping of sediment sources and channel changes, as well as glacial and periglacial landforms on remotely-sensed images to build georeferenced databases for geo-hazard assessment. The field-based component illustrates techniques for field-based mapping, characterizing channel bed texture, as well as monitoring water and sediment fluxes. The discussion is fostered by a literature review on selected topics that vary from year to year. Finally, analysis of data collected in the field is performed by groups of students, in preparation of a short technical report.

The course focuses on basic knowledge of the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics and simple integrable models. Students are trained to write the Lagrangian and the Hamiltonian function for mechanical systems, to analyze the phase space and the stability of fixed points, to integrate the equation of a central field and a rigid body with rotational symmetry, and to use variational principles and canonical transformations. Course topics including dynamical systems; the definition of Equilibrium and study of its linear and non-linear stability; Lagrangian mechanics; symmetries; Noether's theorem; mechanical models; rotation group and rigid body; dynamics in a rotating frame; and Hamiltonian mechanics.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. This course introduces the analysis of conflicts and international interventions providing an overview of major theoretical approaches and empirical applications in those fields. The course deals with the conceptual and methodological tools provided by academic literature and applies such concepts and methods to analysis of major conflicts and experiences of international interventions. The course starts by introducing the major strands of research that analyzed conflict onset and dynamics. Then, an overview of scholarship on interventions is presented and discussed. Finally, 6 seminars are devoted to the application of theories to the analysis of wars (and interventions) in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, Colombia, the Sahel region, and Syria.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The objective of the course is to present the most effective techniques for the solution of complex decisional problems arising in the optimal planning and management of large-scale systems concerning both the public and the private sectors. Mathematical models and heuristic algorithms for the practical solution of the corresponding optimization problems are described. Particular attention is given to the algorithmic and implementation aspects. Applications of the proposed techniques to real-world problems are presented and analyzed. The course discusses topics including: basic integer programming optimization: integer programming models, formulations, relaxations; basic heuristic approaches: constructive algorithms and local search procedures, examples for KP01 and TSP; worst-case performance analysis; metaheuristics: Multistart, Tabu Search, Simulated Annealing, Genetic Algorithms, Iterated Local Search, Variable Neighborhood Search, Large Neighborhood Search, Ruin and Recreate, and Ant Systems; optimization on graphs: shortest path, minimum spanning tree, and maximum flow; heuristic and metaheuristic algorithms for difficult combinatorial optimization problems; and real-world applications. Prerequisites for this course are: basic knowledge of Operations Research, as well as the implementation of computer codes and complexity theory.