Lund University

The course provides understanding and knowledge about the behavior of advanced timber structures, tools for modeling and design, and the ability to weigh the pros and cons of different structural systems. The course includes the following parts: timber structures multi-story buildings and structures with a long span; instability of members (lateral torsional buckling of beams); straight and curved members; holes and notches in beams; cross-laminated timber; bracing of structures; design of details; connections for timber structures including dowel-type joints and glued joints; learning from failures; frames, arches, and cable structures; and the ability to independently approach, solve, and present one's work. 

The course is an introduction to social theories in Artificial Intelligence (AI). The course draws reflections and theoretical comparisons between how humans engage in meaningful interactions with other humans and with social robots. The course begins with an overview of the standard and contrasting accounts of social cognition and its development, spanning from the Theory of Mind, embodied and situated approaches, and neural mirroring theories. Mainstream research paradigms to investigate human-robot interactions will be also presented. Finally, the course advances some current psychological and philosophical critical issues related to ethical, relational, and functional issues of using social robots as partners in human daily interactions.

The course discusses the various expressions of popular culture within 20th-century art and media. Collaboration between different media is emphasized. The main focus is on contemporary western culture, the latter years of the 20th century, and the expressions of postmodern culture, although several episodes in the cultural history of the whole century are studied historically. Advertising, television, music videos, movies, literature, and music are analyzed. Theoretical tools are introduced from the foundations of intermedia studies, cultural sociology, hermeneutics, and semiotics. Several examples are presented for analysis and discussion. Students identify basic concepts, ideas, and terminology in intermedia studies, and describe popular cultural conditions that account for some of the processes that shaped the postmodern art of the 1900s and its relationship to popular culture. 

Understanding sustainability broadly, the course explores how social entrepreneurship and innovation are a particular form of organizing toward social transformation. The course provides knowledge of how to explore and evaluate social entrepreneurship and innovations in theory and practice. Different theories and intellectual tools from social sciences are used to both understand the phenomenon of social entrepreneurship and innovation and apply them to the design of social entrepreneurial ventures in groups. During the theoretical part of the course, an introduction to the academic field of social entrepreneurship and important key concepts in social innovations are reviewed. Students work in groups to develop their own social enterprise. 

Animals figure in human society and culture in multiple ways, while frequently being marginalized or reduced to commodities, production units, status symbols, and tools. This course offers a critical exploration of how a shifting economic, scientific, political, and media-shaped landscape assigns various roles and values to animals in contemporary Western society and the consequences for the living conditions of animals and humans alike. The course integrates innovative critical animal studies research from a range of areas such as sociology, media and communication studies, philosophy, cultural studies, geography, gender studies, and critical race studies.