Trinity College Dublin

This course examines how the Internet works and how everyday online activities generate data that are collected, analyzed, and monetized by digital platforms. It explores key issues related to data privacy, security, ownership, and control, addressing questions about how personal information is used and how individuals can protect themselves online. The course provides practical knowledge and tools for understanding Internet infrastructure, data tracking practices, and strategies for managing one’s digital presence with greater confidence and awareness.

This course is designed for complete beginners with no prior knowledge of Spanish. It introduces the fundamentals of speaking, listening, reading, and writing, while also exploring a key cultural topic in its linguistic context.

This course examines the role of human psychology, human thought and behavior, in the climate and biodiversity crises. It explores how we got where we are, what it is about human thought and behavior and the structures and systems created that produced these crises and inactions. The course covers how the Climate Crisis is affecting human health, behavior, and well-being as well as the ways these effects are unevenly distributed across the world and the implications of this inequity. Finally, this course covers what psychology has to offer in terms of solutions and how to leverage our understanding of human thought and behavior to enact climate justice.

This course introduces students to the history of political thought, with a focus upon the ancient world of classical Greece. Topics include the birth of politics in ancient Athens; Plato’s critique of democracy; the justification of political rule; the role of virtue in political life.

This course examines some of the wealth of artistic production in the Netherlands in the 17th century. The course is based around the study of Rembrandt and Vermeer as contrasting and complementary figures who represent some of the diverse tendencies of the time. This entails the study of the development of individual styles and subject matter ranging from history painting to portraiture, landscape, and genre painting. The distinct artistic character associated with centers of production, even ones that were geographically close, is assessed with an emphasis on Amsterdam, Delft, and Utrecht. The final block of the course looks at the posthumous reputations of Rembrandt and Vermeer, examining questions of attribution, authenticity, canonicity, and rediscovery. 

This course examines a variety of theoretical perspectives on the reasons why people commit crime, what constitutes crime, and how states respond to crime. Students explore a range of theories from classical and positivist approaches, to sociological theories, to feminist approaches, and contemporary research. The relevance of these theories to the case of Ireland, and aspects of criminal justice internationally are also assessed.   

This course facilitates the exploration of the construction of childhood and youth in Irish writing. Students have the opportunity to analyze texts written for adult readers as well as texts written for children. The course examines texts through the lens of "childhood and youth," and students are introduced to a series of subject areas including myth, folklore, community, education, history, postcolonialism, race, ability, genders, and sexualities. With a focus on texts from the 20th and 21st centuries, discussions are positioned within the context of broader cultural debates and incorporate a number of theoretical approaches.