Maastricht University – University College Maastricht

This course focuses on age as identity marker and is set up in true interdisciplinary fashion encompassing perspectives from economy, history, the arts, globalization and gender studies, amongst others. Headlines everywhere tell us that ours is a graying world and that population aging is a defining influence on our twenty-first century, radically affecting public health and national economies. These demographic predictions—the result of the trends of declining mortality and increasing longevity—are typically accompanied by dire warnings of the challenges ahead: unsustainable pension systems which encumber younger generations, the critical need for more caregivers and more resources to care for the increasing numbers of those who are frail and dependent, concerns about maintaining technological progress and competitive workforces with an aging labor force, etc. Rarely are such numbers presented in terms of the possible benefits that population aging might bring, such as in experienced leadership, informal caregiving, and a more flexible labor force less hampered by child care. Also often excluded from these projections is any sense of what life is actually like for the diverse millions of people who grow into old age. The course explores what aging is and means from different disciplinary, historical and (trans)national perspectives, examining the concerns raised about aging societies and the causes and consequences of ageism, which is prejudice or discrimination based upon a person's age. Aging is a topic that we all have a stake in. On one level, this stake is very personal. On a larger scale, the concerns of population aging cross every discipline and ageism pervades all parts of our social and personal lives, even when we don't recognize it. This course prepares students to engage critically in the current and future debates about our aging society and to interrogate hopes and fears for aging experiences. Theoretically and methodologically, this course is part of diversity studies as it adds the category of age to other identity markers, such as gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and religion.

The course introduces and defines the field of transitional justice. It looks into its historical evolution and address the rationales underlying it. The introduction furthermore includes an overview of the main mechanisms/components that can be part of the process of transitional justice and how they are interrelated. The course subsequently addresses several of these transitional justice mechanisms and this analysis predominantly focuses on the perspectives of the victims. Victims (and survivors) are not only a group, but also individual human beings and their wishes and interests in the aftermath of large scale conflict can be very diverse and even contradict the wishes of other victims or the group as such. In this context specific attention is given to the impact of violent conflict on women and children. Throughout the course critical attention is paid to the following justice mechanisms: apologies and forgiveness, memorialization and commemoration, truth telling and truth commissions, pardons and amnesties, compensation, restoration, restitution, international and regional criminal courts and tribunals, lustration, and vetting. The analysis concludes with a discussion of the various justice mechanisms and their potential to contribute to (or jeopardize) sustainable peace. In addition to issues such as justice and reconciliation, other matters are also significant in post-conflict societies as they greatly affect the consolidation of peace and stability. Justice and reconciliation only form one pillar of reconstruction, but also in other areas constructive action is required. Such other areas of concern include, for instance, security, wellbeing, and governance. The course therefore looks into the process of reconstruction and discusses which actions are required in order to move from the precarious early stages of post conflict transition to a more sustainable situation which allows for the consolidation of peace and stability. Case studies play an important role throughout the course and therefore a wide variety of cases are covered including The Holocaust and other cases of genocide (Armenia, Australia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur, etc.). Although cases of genocide play an important role in this course, the case load is certainly not limited to genocide and other violent conflicts in Chili, Argentina, Guatemala, Indonesia, East Timor, Iraq, Syria, Congo, Central African Republic, are addressed, along with the torture practices of the U.S.

Immunology focuses on the role of different humoral factors, cells and cell systems of the innate and adaptive immune system, that are involved in the defense of an organism against intruders like foreign cells or non-complex structures such as foreign proteins. Processes in the immune response after immunization, vaccination, and transplantation are discussed. Prerequisites knowledge in Introduction to Biology is required. 

 

This is a beginning German course for people with no prior knowledge of German. An intake is not necessary. In this course, students learn the basis of German grammar. Students build a vocabulary in order to read and understand simple sentences. Students also learn to: introduce themselves; ask for directions; order food and drinks; make purchases at a shop.

This course covers the theory and practice of business analytics. The course discusses tools for the analysis of data, as well as methods for discovering knowledge from information and using this knowledge for intelligent decision making. The course applies current data mining techniques to real-life problems using modern software tools (SAS, SPSS modeller, Tableau, WEKA, XLMiner). The course studies how (and how not) to extract information from large databases with standard techniques from data mining and how to interpret the results. The first two cases, selected from the literature, give students experience with the mentioned goals. The last two or three cases are selected from business practices based on current topical developments of the various disciplines involved with data oriented decision making: financial, marketing, supply chain management, etc. These cases are introduced by select major companies. This course gives students hands-on experience in analyzing managerial decision processes based on available data, and using quantitative techniques for decision making.

This course delves into the human aspects of urban locations that embody contrasts and contradictions, and it analyzes social, economic, and political processes in cities of the Global South. Students discuss connections and tensions between urban communities and economic development, the creation of vulnerable populations through urbanization and the precariousness of labor, the structural failures of slum ecologies and how they affect people, but also how citizens nevertheless find uncountable modes of making the city their home. The course examines the articulation of neo-liberalism in urban space, the consequences of international debt and structural adjustment projects in “megacities”, and looks at how cities are hubs for moving people (most often women) to other places to make a living in the service industries – domestic labor, sex work, cleaning jobs. Furthermore, it examines the opportunities these cities represent: as spaces of creativity, new mélanges of identities, new cultural forms and novel cultural, economic, social and political prospects. Prerequisites for the course include a course on globalization and inequality or sustainable development.

In this course students learn the what the following fundamental concepts involve: numbers, a.o. integers, natural numbers, real numbers and prime numbers and properties that these classes of numbers have; logic, drawing conclusions and how to use logic to prove mathematical statements; sets, properties of sets and concepts related to sets, like intersections, and unions; mathematical relations, a comparing mechanism for elements in a set, several relations and their properties; functions, mapping from one set to another, properties of functions, like invertibility; combinatorics, the science of smart counting, permutations and combinations. Almost every time mathematics is used, it concerns some of the above concepts. Students who are interested in (applied) mathematics, computer science and/or econometrics might find this course particularly useful.

This course analyzes techno-science as a socio-cultural phenomenon. It offers an introduction to Science and Technology Studies (STS). It introduces students to the multiple ways in which science and technology, individuals and institutions mutually shape one another to the benefit and sometimes detriment of society. This course takes a critical approach to science and engineering. Students think critically but constructively about aspects of science and technology by focusing on different empirical domains such as human enhancement (e.g. Google glasses, Ritalin, Blade runner), disasters (e.g. Fukushima, Hurricane Katerina), the gene revolution (e.g. Monsanto) and the politics of artifacts (e.g. park benches, the UCM building, and nuclear plants) while using a set of principles and approaches from the field of Science and Technology Studies.