Trinity College Dublin

The history of climate and environment are rapidly evolving fields of study that aim to reconstruct environmental and climate conditions over past centuries and millennia, and to understand how societies perceived and responded to changing environmental conditions and events such as natural disasters and extreme weather. These aims can be best achieved by combining evidence from both natural and human archives. In this course, students examine how natural archives such as tree-rings and sediment cores can be used to reveal climate and environmental variations in the past. They examine how this information can be combined with evidence from human archives, including written and archaeological records, to understand the social impacts of environmental change. In doing so, they draw upon case studies from the ancient, medieval, and early modern eras. The case studies range from ancient Egypt and Babylonia to the ancient American Southwest, and from there to Medieval Ireland, and into the oceanic realm. In these places students examine the role of pre-modern societies in transforming the face of the earth, and how humans perceived and coped with a changing environment.

This course covers approaches to understanding perception and cognition, from the perspective that these functions can only be considered sensibly in an action context. Consideration is given to exemplars drawn from various areas of psychology that serve to illustrate the role of movement in aspects of perception and cognition regarded traditionally as being independent of the means of effect. The course deals with observations defined at the level of behavior. It also includes evidence drawn from the neurosciences - concerning brain activity subserving perception, cognition, and motor function that bears upon these issues. In addition, consideration is given to some of the related philosophical questions that are raised. Students are also introduced to the possibility that intervention strategies thus informed, may be used to maintain or enhance cognitive performance.