University of Copenhagen

This course examines transnational global climate change developments through the lens of broader debates about transnationalism in world politics. It explores how and under what conditions sub-national and non-state actors such as cities, corporations, NGOs, and Indigenous peoples have become central to global efforts to address climate change. The course also considers the diverse forms of transnational governance led by these actors and the relationship of these initiatives to multilateral treaties and other state-based forms of climate change regulation. It reviews efforts to assess whether transnationalism contributes to a more effective global response to climate change and reflects on the normative issues raised as transnational actors and forms of governance become more deeply embedded in global climate politics.

This course begins by focusing on the theories of rhetoric to trace the rise and fall of rhetorical citizenship, the development of the concept, and its challenges in rhetoric-related discussions over the past twenty years. The study of the current intersections between rhetoric and citizenship includes discussions of the deliberative democracy and the relationship between democracy and dissent, debate, protest, anti-citizenship, social movements, civic engagement, and resistance. The course explores the relationship between science, politics, and the public, and includes topics such as climate change and pandemics. It involves lectures, debates, group work, and fieldwork, and includes oral presentations, the production of a podcast section, and a workshop on the exam assignment. The course creates a multi-language learning environment for the comfort of all participants with an active-learning approach to teaching and engagement expected during each class meeting.

This course consists of a series of interactive workshops that provide an opportunity to design, practice, and deliver academic presentations in the student’s field of study. It covers the preparation stage of effective and memorable presentations, how to structure thoughts, and how to hone presentation skills to persuade in lectures, oral exams, master theses defenses, conferences, and public speaking in general. Topics include designing, preparing, and structuring informative and persuasive presentations; creating supporting slides; using correct academic and domain specific language; speaking confidently with appropriate rate, projection, pitch, and tone; implementing nonverbal communication such as facial expression, eye contact, moving with the slides; using vocal variety and pauses to spellbind the audience; switching on the charisma button; applying “logos, ethos, and pathos”; expanding one’s comfort zone in front of an audience and delivering with confidence; analyzing and critiquing presentations in a detailed and diplomatic way; and dealing with fear when speaking in front of an audience. 

This course is an introduction to the works and philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard, the internationally renowned Danish philosopher, theologian, and writer. Considered as the father of existentialism, Kierkegaard's works revolve around basic human experiences such as aesthetic lust, despair, anxiety, morality, passion, knowledge, absurdity, and faith. In particular, Kierkegaard claimed to present a complete summary of the possible ways in which we can live our lives or exist. The course also analyzes and criticizes these ways thoroughly in order to judge to what extent they may give us a true point of orientation. This course examines his witty, humorous, and deeply earnest exploration of the philosophical psychology of self-identity. It remains especially attentive to how Kierkegaard considers human relationships to be essential to understanding oneself and one’s obligations to other human beings. Lectures focus on a discussion of excerpts from Kierkegaard's writings. The course includes a City Walk through old Copenhagen and a guest lecture that explores Kierkegaard's view of love. The course does not presuppose specialized knowledge and is eligible to students of all majors.

This course is specifically designed for non-business students who want to learn about idea development and start-up processes in new ventures and prepare for the non-technical aspects of innovation processes in organizations. The course introduces theories and tools for entrepreneurship and innovation management that can assist in idea development and realization. To combine the process with own world perspectives, students build venture teams and develop their own venture idea that addresses a challenge connected to their fields of study, such as unresolved problems and new opportunities in their academic environments. The course includes theory input and insights from practitioners and has a strong focus on team project work and feedback sessions. Theory sessions include an introduction to innovation and entrepreneurship theories, and innovation management frameworks and tools that can be applied in new ventures or existing organizations (creativity techniques, innovation process models, design thinking, business modelling including sustainable business models). Through project group work, in-class exercises, and interaction with stakeholders, students work in their venture teams and apply theories and tools to develop venture ideas.

This course provides an introduction to the key concepts, issues, and methods in human-computer interaction and interaction design. Through a combination of lectures and exercises, it covers usability, designing user-friendly systems, and evaluating user interfaces. The course discusses theories of human-computer interaction, the special challenges associated with the design of user-friendly interactive systems, advantages and disadvantages of different forms of interaction, building user interfaces and prototypes of user interfaces, and how to examine the usability of IT systems in a rigorous way.

This course operates from the premise that there is nothing natural about gender differences. It explores the theoretical underpinnings of this premise and its implications for how scholars, students, and practitioners can think about sustainable development centered around commoning and care. This overview course has a distinct approach to understanding how gender and ecological conditions are interrelated. Grounded in social theory, it is inherently critical of standard development and gender narratives and instead seeks explanatory power within historical and structural conditions and explores different approaches to this. The course readings are selected as key contributions to broad debates on gender, environment, and development and are rooted in disciplinary fields such as critical geography, political economy, feminist political ecology, and critical social theory. Structured around core themes including decoloniality, critiques of capitalism, globalization, performativity, care, and commoning, the course engages in primary readings of feminist and other critical scholars who have been at the forefront of conceptualizing gender and human/environment relations in different ways. It discusses how gender and ecological conditions are interrelated; the dynamics behind the widespread “dual oppression" of particular humans and the environment as well as the policy responses designed to redress these; critical perspectives on buzzwords like “sustainability,” "sustainable development,” and "gender” that circulate in policy and project documents, global “development goals,” and social movements; and a range of conceptual and analytical tools to both explain today’s realities and instigate change toward new future trajectories. The course offers students of environment and development, geography, global development, environmental science, food science, natural resources governance, or similar fields the opportunity to learn how to understand and analyze the relations between gender, environment, and sustainable development, and to engage in debates about different approaches to these issues. It combines close reading and discussion of texts with case studies, documentaries, and interactions with activists and social movements. It provides an opportunity to build skills to formulate critical questions and clear methodologies around the entanglements between issues of gender and the environment and the challenges these pose to sustainable development to understand and engage in diverse gender and environment conflicts and debates across diverse topics, scales, and contexts.

This course introduces the mathematical formalism of quantum information theory. Topics include a review of probability theory and classical information theory (random variables, Shannon entropy, coding); formalism of quantum information theory (quantum states, density matrices, quantum channels, measurement); quantum versus classical correlations (entanglement, Bell inequalities, Tsirelson's bound); basic tools (distance measures, fidelity, quantum entropy); basic results (quantum teleportation, quantum error correction, Schumacher data compression); and quantum resource theory (quantum coding theory, entanglement theory, application: quantum cryptography). 

This course provides an introduction to demography focusing on developing basic demography methods related to the measurement of vital events. These methods are then applied to study empirically (and theoretically) how demographic and economic changes interact with each other over time. Topics include measures of and economic and social determinants of fertility, mortality, and migration; as well as macro- and microeconomic causes and consequences of demographic transitions.

This political theory course considers whether the end of climate change denial leads to climate justice or new forms of fascisms. It takes seriously the emergence of new ecofascist tendencies as complex phenomena to be critically studied, analyzed, and contested. The course is divided into three parts. The first part explores various conceptualizations of fascism and climate change generally. It then analyzes the tendency from climate change denial towards realism about (anthropogenic) climate change and the forms of fascism that may follow from it. Finally, it discusses democratic responses to the emerging phenomena. The course draws on political theories concerning climate change, democracy, and fascism. It presents ecofascist, neo-Malthusian, petro-masculinist, and collapsologist movements that in some cases convey racist, misogynic, and homophobic ideas and critically discusses them within materialist, new materialist, and critical theoretical frameworks.