Trinity College Dublin

The course focuses on substantive criminal law: defining crimes, basic concepts in criminal law, the general principles of criminal liability, different defenses, and types of criminal offence. Students become familiar with the basic principles underlying the Irish system of criminal law and with the basic aspects of the criminal court process. Students are encouraged to think critically and analytically about the rules, judgments, and legislation that are studied during the course.

Case studies of patients with brain damage remain a critical part of cognitive neuropsychology's methods for understanding the organization of cognitive systems, and devising principled approaches to rehabilitation. In this topic, there is great scope for clinicians and researchers to inform and learn from one another with respect to the manifestation of clinical disorders, their potential causes, and paths to rehabilitation. While students are aware of famous patients with brain damage (e.g. Phineas Gage and patient H.M.), this course addresses lesser-known cases that have provided important insights into contemporary research problems across several domains including attention, memory, dysexecutive syndrome and disorders of meta-cognition, and social-cognitive processing.

The course examines the core phenomena of religious and spiritual belief and practice – faith, guilt and forgiveness, worship – through the lenses of different psychologies. Psychoanalysis, social, cognitive, behavioral, biological, evolutionary and positive psychology have all addressed these. Students explore their theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and the types of empirical data they have gathered. They also look at distinctive features of human culture that, while not specifically religious, are arguably fundamental to the experience of being human, such as art, fiction, and humor. Core to the course is consideration of multiple rationalities and the nature and status of different types and levels of knowledge – religious vs. scientific, psychological vs. sociological, evolutionary vs. humanistic – in understanding the human condition.

There is little disagreement that far-reaching societal, technological, political, and economic transformations are required if we are to avoid the worst effects of global, anthropogenic environmental change. What form these transformations should take and who should take responsibility for them are, however, far from settled. This course considers some of the key conceptual debates and environmental conflicts arising in this context. Examination of these debates and conflicts demonstrate the contested and uneven nature of environmental change and the measures sought to address these changes. The course helps students develop a more nuanced, critical, and multi-disciplinary understanding of environmental change and the different, often contested, ways of responding to such changes. The course consists of weekly interactive lectures/seminars, guest lectures, and set readings. Lectures introduces students to key concepts and perspectives drawn from the broad field of political ecology. Each week part of the class is set aside for students to develop their research projects. These projects focus on a key area of environmental contestation in Ireland through a political ecology lens.

This course provides students with a critical understanding and comprehensive knowledge of the government and politics of the EU, with a focus on EU public policy.  It examines the main institutions of the EU (the Commission, Council, European Parliament and the European Court of Justice), interest groups in Brussels, and different theoretical approaches to understanding policy-making. Thereafter students learn about specific EU policies including: single market, competition, economic and monetary union, agriculture, social, internal and external policies. 

This course provides an overview of the study of the development of children and adolescents. Students will learn about the changes that occur across different domains of development throughout infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Students learn about developmental theories, themes, and concepts, and about the methods involved in developmental research. The addresses critical issues and frameworks that shape how we understand and study development, such as the interacting roles of nature and nurture in development, debates about continuity and discontinuity in development, the influence of the socio-cultural context on development, the role of children in their own development, and the interaction of the social, cognitive, and biological domains in development.

Climate change is one of the most important challenges we face. The effects of climate change vary over time and space, and are rooted in the operation and sensitivity of the climate system itself. This course first gives students a fundamental understanding of Earth’s climate system and then investigates the history of climate on Earth and how (and why) climate changes over time. Students explore historical records of climate before turning their focus to future climate projections, including how models predict future climate scenarios.
Students also evaluate what implications future climate projections may have for communities both locally and globally.