University of Copenhagen

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.

This course offers a unique opportunity to study some of the world’s oldest religions in a comparative perspective. It is an interdisciplinary initiative between the disciplines of the Study of Religions, Egyptology, and Assyriology. The course is theme-oriented and each unit has both a more theoretical part along with an empirical component that focuses on texts and objects from Egypt and Mesopotamia. Themes studied include deities and concepts of the divine, mythologies, temples and sacred space, ritual leaders and other religious agents, rituals and festivals, hymns and prayers, magic, healing rituals and divination, conceptions of death and afterlife. The course also introduces the main textual sources (such as the Gilgamesh Epic, the Babylonian Epic of Creation, the Myth of Isis and Osiris, and the Book of the Dead), excerpts of which are read in English translation. The course provides a general overview of the basic theoretical debates in the history of religions, as well as a basic overview of religious beliefs and practices in ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia (c. 3300 BCE – 300 CE). The empirical material in class come from the religions of the ancient Near East, but the analytical tools used are applicable on historical religions at large.

This course introduces theories, methods, and procedures that can be used to assess and manage the psychosocial work environment in work organizations. It covers theoretical and methodological approaches to the understanding of different types of job demands and job resources, and their differential impact on health, well-being, and organizational behavior. The course also discusses theoretical and practical approaches to occupational health assessment and intervention; and workplace bullying: concept, measurement, antecedents, and consequences, and intervention levels. Through group activities and case analyses, it introduces the challenges of translating theory into practice. The course is graded on a pass/no pass basis only.

This course studies topological spaces and continuous maps. Main topics include: topological spaces; subspace, order, product, metric and quotient topologies; continuous functions; connectedness and compactness; countability and separation axioms. Secondary topics include: retractions and fixed points; Tychonoff Theorem; compactifications; and vistas of algebraic topology. 

The focus of the course is on the relations between terrestrial ecosystems and global climate systems. Seen in a historical and present perspective as well as on a temporal and spatial scale, the interactions between climate and ecosystem are put in perspective of the ongoing and future climate change. Further, the course explains how models and data bases are used to develop future climate scenarios and reconstruction of previous climate conditions, as well as the anthropogenic role in the present changes in climate.

This course examines the primacy of aesthetics in comprehending and responding to environmental crises by considering the role of the arts in addressing environmental disasters;  whether the aesthetic appreciation of nature should be grounded in scientific understanding; and the aesthetic dimensions of climate change, wastelands, wetlands, and wilderness. Attending the connection between historical conditions and philosophical notions, the course explores the emergence of environmental aesthetics within the European philosophical tradition of the mid-eighteenth century, concurrent with the first industrial revolution and rise of capitalism. It reviews classical and contemporary texts (from Immanuel Kant and Alexander Baumgarten to Peter Sloterdijk, Sianne Ngai, and Yuriko Saito), and introduces key categories: the beautiful, sublime and picturesque; landscape, scenery, environment; atmosphere, climate; Nature, the Anthropocene–and its critical alternatives. Deploying these concepts, the course analyzes contemporary works of art and literature grounded in awareness of ecological conditions quite different from older traditions (e.g. of landscape painting and nature poetry), examining the work of artists such as Olafur Eliasson and his former students, and science fiction writers from Mary Shelley to Kim Stanley Robinson. Finally, this course derives an important lesson from the history of aesthetics and its engagement with the environs: the aesthetic pertains as much to the background as to foreground of attention; to ambient conditions of everyday life as to works of art and unique sites. Thus, the course moves in the direction of a revaluation of our modes of life, with particular attention to our homely environmental aesthetics: the banal, quotidian, routine, and habitual aspects of our lives, homes, and streets. This is the arena in which the impact of environmental crises–and efforts to remediate them–is felt most acutely: in our patterns of consumption of energy and materials, how we dress, do chores, feed ourselves, transport, and communicate. Through these intimate investigations, the course considers how contemporary ideas of the environment call for a rethinking of aesthetics, as well as aesthetic approaches to environmental remediation.