Trinity College Dublin

This course looks at the process of first language acquisition by examining the social and cognitive mechanisms that drive language learning in the first few years of life. It is designed to provide students with an in-depth understanding of first language acquisition with a focus on spoken language in typical healthy children. The course starts with an exploration of pre-verbal communication in infancy and tracks verbal development during toddlerhood into middle childhood. Overarching issues in linguistic theory, in the form of competing explanations of language acquisition patterns, will be discussed and key debates and current research in the field will be examined.

This course is an introduction to linguistics. It gives a general knowledge of each area of linguistics drawing from a range of spoken and signed languages. It provides the students who have no previous knowledge of linguistics with a background in core areas of the field – phonetics, phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics, and their acquisition. The course is divided in three parts: the first part is an introduction to the field of linguistics, the second part is concerned with the structure of natural languages, and the third part is related to language modality, with particular attention to signed languages and gesture.

This course provides a broad understanding of language learning and familiarizes students with some pedagogical considerations and second language acquisition theory as a necessary underpinning to the use of technology in language learning. Students learn a range of speech and language technologies that can be deployed in educational applications. Students learn practical skills in the design/development of digital educational content. 

This course includes prediction using machine learning; choice of features, including for text, images, time series; model selection (e.g. linear, kernel, neural net); learning as empirical risk minimization; common machine learning techniques (linear regression, logistic regression, SVMs, kernel trick, neural nets, convolutional neural nets, kNN, k-Means); evaluating machine learning methods (cross-validation, bootstrapping, ROC, use of a baseline); and practical experience of applying machine learning methods to real data.  

This course explores the art of Europe in the long 15th century (approximately 1380-1520) with particular attention to religious culture and belief; how gender and the body were understood and expressed; the role of pilgrimage, suffrages and the saints; the differences of artistic expressions between northern Europe (e.g. Flanders) and southern (Italy); the art of crises such as witchcraft, plague and religious reform; and the ways in which naturalism and humanism challenged existing modes of artistic expression. Students also look at whether the view of the period as one steeped in pessimism, the macabre and thoughts of decay, known according to the formulation of Jan Huizinga as the "waning of the Middle Ages" is still useful. The dominant centers to be examined are the cities of Flanders and Italy, but the art of northern France, England, Germany, and elsewhere is also drawn on.

This course teaches the foundational concepts of geomorphology in preparation for advanced courses and a final Capstone project. It relies less on traditional rote lecture and more on activities and application of concepts presented in the text and during class time. This course focuses primarily on large-scale geomorphology, and how the large-scale topography students observe on Earth today is both created and broken down through time. Students examine the two primary drivers of geomorphology: tectonics and climate. They consider questions that on their face seem very basic- for example, why is the Earth round? but which have complex, fascinating answers with implications for the whole of the Earth surface. 

This course examines images of astrology found in illuminated manuscripts, astrological charts and talismans, playing cards, prints, maps, paintings and tapestries, as well as in architecture in the broad global early modern world to explore their political, medical, divinatory, and magical use. Considering the early modern Western astrology as the result of the intercultural exchanges from Greece, Babylon and India to the rest of the world via images and texts that translated diverse ideas on natural philosophy, the students will learn key concepts from Renaissance Neoplatonism and Hermeticism to discuss the reception of astrological knowledge in a variety of everyday objects. Students will also reflect on the role of astrological images in the transmission of Western knowledge (deemed magical or scientific) via colonization, as well as on the influence that early modern celestial observations taken forth by cutting–edge artifacts and novel circumnavigations around the world had on the global shaping of astrological imagery.

This course addresses the core topics in medical law: clinical negligence, consent to treatment, and confidentiality. These are the legal and ethical issues that arise in all healthcare interactions, and therefore the topics that arise most commonly in practice. The course focuses on mastering the black letter law aspects of these topics, but also on delving into the theoretical principles that underpin them. 

The course introduces the fundamental conceptual aspects of the study of human behavior that have informed the applications of the science of behavior change. Behavioral principles are essential to understanding all aspects of "what humans do" and why they behave in such ways. The number of therapeutic approaches and interventions which have been researched and developed from the science of behavior analysis has rapidly expanded especially in recent decades. Such behavioral interventions have impacted significantly across a wide range of clinical issues including for example: child development and behavioral/emotional difficulties, individuals living with brain injury, people living with dementia, the assessment and treatment of self-injurious behavior and other challenging behaviors, accelerated educational outcomes, and best practice in treatment for children with neurodevelopmental and related conditions. The course content is designed to provide an introduction to the impact and scope of behavior analysis as a "helping profession" across contexts and populations.

This course exposes students to many different facets of the Black lived experience, thereby encouraging the development of a more informed, nuanced perspective. Critical engagement with topics such as the history of the Black diaspora, debates surrounding the decolonization of the curriculum, the soft colonialism of Irish religious aid, and social justice movements encourages a global perspective among students and enable them to act on the basis of this knowledge and understanding.