University of Copenhagen

This course provides an interdisciplinary examination of human trafficking, exploring its nature, impact, and responses from various angles. Through a combination of readings, discussions, and research, it critically analyzes the complexities of human trafficking, including its forms, anti-trafficking advocacy, challenges in research and evidence, psychological effects on victims, funding mechanisms, and public perceptions. Drawing on seminal texts, recent research articles, and recommended readings, the course provides insight into the global phenomenon of human trafficking and its implications for policy, advocacy, and social justice. Throughout, it explores pertinent psychological phenomena, including trauma bonding, learned helplessness, dissociation, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, cognitive dissonance, survivor's guilt, and post-traumatic growth, which significantly influence victims' experiences and recovery processes. Through this comprehensive examination, the course develops a deeper understanding of human trafficking and its impact on individuals and societies.

This course investigates the economic and political causes and consequences of rising economic inequality. In doing so, it reviews and discusses both classic and recent work that seeks to provide answers to the questions: what is driving dramatic changes in economic inequality, and how does rising economic inequality affect democracy, politics, and political preferences? Specifically, the course discusses how the post-1980 era is different from the one that came before; how economic inequality affects the redistribution of income from the rich to the poor; how it transforms preferences for redistribution and taxation; whether rising inequality is a democratic problem; and whether it increases political inequality and the distribution of political power.

This course explores questions concerning personal identity and transformation raised by the two Golden-Age writers who hold a pivotal position in Danish cultural heritage: Hans Christian Andersen and Soren Kierkegaard. The course treats the question of searching for one's identity and themes of self-examination, self-definition, inner exploration, as well as understanding one's values, belief's, passions, and purpose in life. Through the works of Andersen and Kierkegaard, these themes are explored in their connection to cultural, social, emotional, and personal dimensions. The course considers how, though both writers are intimately connected to their contemporary society, there is something in their works that far surpasses the limits of the national and historical consciousness to which they adhere, and extend to a wider, global, and modern consciousness. It examines what it is in their writings that merits such a prolonged actuality and such an extensive, modern appeal. Through a vast proliferation of conceptual, fictive, and allegorical narratives, Andersen and Kierkegaard outline a map for the individual to navigate a path toward self-realization, without giving any definite directions nor any fixed points of orientation.

This course traces the conception of authentic existence in the works of thinkers from the Existentialist tradition, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Hannah Arendt, and Copenhagen’s own Søren Kierkegaard. Among other things, the course observes how ethical thinking has moved from the language of duty to that of personal answerability, and how the search for meaningful personal existence has increasingly become the responsibility of the individual. The unique vocabulary of these authors appears not only in works of philosophy, theology, and psychology, but also literature and theater, which illustrates that we understand ourselves via the stories we tell, and that these narratives are necessarily told in dialogue with “the Other,” our fellow human beings.

This  course explores the theoretical and practical intersections of filmmaking, social impact, and activism in international relations. It does so with a core focus on how filmmaking has been used to explore phenomena related to humanitarian issues globally, especially those linked to contexts of conflict, migration, and violence. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, the course delves into the rich scholarship of visuality across the social sciences, introducing that work both theoretically and practically in three main ways. First, the course engages with critical interdisciplinary perspectives on the role of visual media within contexts of violence through theoretical literature and audio-visual material. Second, it explores practical skills in visual research methodologies. As such, in this section of the course, students develop a short filmmaking project of their own. Workshop-format sessions are offered to develop the skills necessary to achieve this. Thematically, the course explores how filmmaking can illuminate questions concerning violence, humanitarianism, conflict, and migration in ways that connect local (i.e., Copenhagen) and global contexts. In addition, guest lectures inspire and connect students to experts in the field. Finally, the course reflects on broader questions, debates, and dilemmas that concern the use of filmmaking for social impact, activism, and/or political intervention. This ranges from the critical examination of storytelling techniques, ethical considerations, and the influence of the filmmakers situated gaze (i.e., positionality) on crafting visual narratives. The course engages these issues by collaboratively reflecting on the filmmaking project that each student develops in the preceding section of the course. Overall, this course provides a nuanced understanding of the transformative potential of filmmaking, alongside tools to navigate the many ethical challenges intrinsic to visual research.

This course focuses on a research-based approach to promoting personal recovery and meaning making among individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia disorders. It studies a metacognition-based approach to the treatment of schizophrenia and discusses the unique dilemmas, challenges, and opportunities in the treatment of those diagnosed with schizophrenia. The first part of the course focuses on the theoretical and clinical definition of metacognition. It trains the coding of open interviews of clients with severe mental illness using the metacognition assessment scale developed by Paul Lysaker. The second part focuses on psychotherapy with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. It studies the values and the core elements of metacognition reflection and insight therapy. Subsequently, it analyzes case material and practices therapeutic interventions based on the metacognitive approach. In the third part of the course, students choose an issue in the field of psychotherapy with clients diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and present the issue in the class. The presentations include an integration between theory, qualitative, and quantitative studies and other relevant sources such as an interview conducted with a professional or an individual who was diagnosed with a severe disorder or media materials that enrich the subject.

This course offers an overview of relevant public health approaches to promotion of optimal health and well-being at the population level, particularly for high-risk and vulnerable sub-groups. The course addresses appropriate frameworks for planning nutritional health promotion programs and provides an overview of different policies and programs in play for the development, implementation and evaluation of public health initiatives in the area of nutrition and diets. The complexity and needs to include environmental, sustainable, and behavioral factors in the planning and conduction of interventions in public health nutrition are addressed. The course uses a problem-based learning approach with engaging real-world examples on the approach in developing nutrient supplementation programs, nutrient profile and health claim regulations, school feeding interventions and meal-on-wheels-programs, development and implementation of meaningful healthy and sustainable dietary guidelines, and evaluation and integration of such programs at national and international level.

This course provides a contemporary overview of theoretical frameworks and research in the area of social cognition, which refers to the cognitive processes that enable individuals to function within a social group. The course considers how we perceive and understand others, how the presence of others changes our cognitive processing, and how our cognitive processes are optimized for group living. Topics include agency, imitation, communication, mentalizing, the relationship between self and other, social influence on cognitive processes, and joint action. Throughout, the course touches on the developmental and evolutionary origins of our core social cognitive capacities, how human social cognition compares to that of other animals, and what neural processes support these capacities.

This course focus on advanced spatial analysis using GIS/Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing. It provides an understanding of the relevant theories and methodologies necessary to select appropriate strategies within the broad context of urban and regional geography. The course discusses the theoretical background and tries out the practical implementation in a number of practical exercises. Topics include GIS and Geoinformatics for urban applications, high resolution remote sensing, spatial analysis, spatial optimization, spatial statistics, and general knowledge of Geodata. 

This course explores how sex is implicated in international politics. It is centered on showing how sex, gender, and sexuality structure understandings and practices of foreign policy, statehood, conflict, political violence, social movements, and the like. To do this, the course traces how debates over "normal" and "traditional" sexual orientation and gender expression have come into international politics and how the current "culture war" around queer rights and protections has come to play a significant role in (re)negotiating international order. Throughout the course, it asks how gender and sexuality, both of which are racialized and classed, are used to construct and maintain power; how in some cases sexuality and gender are mobilized to legitimize certain foreign and domestic policies. The course divides into two parts. The first half of the course focuses on theoretical and conceptual debates about sex(uality). The second half of the course focuses on mobilizing this theoretical and conceptual work to study queer issues in world politics.