Trinity College Dublin

This course examines the social, economic, and political processes that maintain hierarchies, drawing on both classical and contemporary theories. By exploring topics such as class, power, race, gender, elites, and cultural capital, the course highlights how inequality shapes opportunities, behaviors, and outcomes. The course investigates both historical and contemporary mechanisms that create and perpetuate stratification, drawing on empirical evidence and theoretical frameworks from sociology and related disciplines. In addition to academic inquiry, the course fosters critical observation and visual analysis, encouraging students to interpret and critique depictions of inequality in everyday life and in cultural media. By connecting abstract concepts to real-world phenomena, students gain a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of inequality and the tools to engage with contemporary debates. The course equips students to reflect on possible solutions to reduce disparities and promote equity in various social contexts.

This course aims to engender a mastery of the fundamentals of programming in C++, a language compiled to optimised machine-code, usable in a uniquely wide range of scenarios, from low level ‘close to the metal’ ones to ones involving high level programming abstractions. Command-line tools are used for program development so the module serves also as an introduction to that approach.

This course examines the social and economic justifications for intellectual property rights as well as their multi-layered regulation. Drawing upon a selection of domestic intellectual property regimes, this course shows the impact of international and European law and decision-making on EU Member States and critically evaluates some of the policies and goals that underlie today’s intellectual property. Although the idea of multi-level regulation of patent and copyright laws goes back to the end of the 19th century, intellectual property rights and their enforcement have been globalized more effectively since the establishment of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1994 and the related adoption of an international agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (known as the ‘TRIPS’ Agreement). The course provides an in-depth examination of the most important provisions of this Agreement and of other international intellectual property conventions, as well as EU regulations and directives that sought to harmonize (or in certain cases even unify, as in the case of trademarks and designs) national legal systems such as the Irish one.

Multilingualism can be investigated from many perspectives such as language acquisition, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics and so forth. This course examines multilingualism mainly from the perspective of applied linguistics, focusing on the distinction between societal multilingualism and individual multilingualism (sometimes described as plurilingualism). It looks at some important definitions and distinctions and the idea of language choice, both at the individual level and in society, and how those choices are shaped (e.g. through official policy and planning decisions). The course touches on topics such as code-switching, heritage languages and language attrition, as well as multilingual pedagogies and assessment. This course introduces students to issues and concepts in individual and societal multilingualism and to examine situations where several languages are present in an individual’s language repertoire or speech community. The course takes as its point of departure multilingual individuals and the process of becoming multilingual throughout life. It examines global, critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on the topic of multilingualism, addressing decolonization and multilingualism in the Global South amongst other topics.

This module explores the role of powerbrokers and stakeholders in the shaping of the sexual politics of modern Ireland. It asks questions about how power was mediated and framed in modern Ireland and why ideas of sex and morality were important. It examines the role of key players, such as the state, the law, the churches/voluntary organizations, campaigners and the media. Central questions considered are: How did concepts regarding sex inform ideas of citizenship in Ireland? How did legislation shape people’s sexual relationships and sexual lives? What role did the churches play in the contemporary framing of sexual relationships? How did ideas about sex inform health and welfare policies? How did the law reinforce certain beliefs about sex and sexuality? How and why did a particular narrative about Irish sexual cultural as pathological and harmful emerge? Can we identify key moments of change in the sexual politics of twentieth-century Ireland?

The field of computational psychiatry has taken off over the last decade. Research in this field uses computational modeling to identify the precise component mechanisms underlying deficits and biases in learning, decision-making and other cognitive processes. The first part of this course reviews some of the early classic papers in this new field illustrating how this approach has been used to advance understanding of psychiatric disorders ranging from anxiety and depression to addiction and schizophrenia. Each week, one or two papers are set in advance, presented using a lecture format, and discussed via class participation. These papers are selected to present some of the most widely used theoretical frameworks and experimental tasks. In the second part of the course, students are introduced to current issues in advancing the nosology of psychiatric disorders. This covers why the field has become unhappy with traditional binary diagnostic categories and alternate approaches advanced to address this, including NIMH’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework for investigating psychiatric disorders, the Hierarchical Taxonomy Of Psychopathology (HiTOP), and modeling of latent factors to tease apart symptom variance associated with comorbid conditions. Following this, students are introduced to precision and translational psychiatry and issues pertaining to the promise or perils of translating computational psychiatry findings into real-world practice.

This course sheds light on how markets emerge and the actions needed to create a market. It also explains the role of institutions, networks, and culture in shaping markets. Lastly, Third, it shows the way in which markets are organized and has distributive effects. Understanding that specific actions are needed to create a market and the different ways in which markets can be shaped counters an understanding that takes markets as granted and market competition and the ensuing consequences as something natural. The course covers the various challenges associated with creating a market: challenge of cooperation, challenge of competition and challenge of establishing value, ability to explain how different mechanisms contribute to solving these challenges, and applying the concepts discussed in class to current issues in concrete markets.

This course provides an introduction to the basics of Modern Standard Arabic. Students learn to how to read, write and speak the language.

Short-lived, high magnitude extreme events, from meteorite impacts, to volcanic eruptions, fire, and storms, have shaped the surface of the earth throughout its geological history. Increasing population densities in critical locations on our planet (e.g. cities at the foot of volcanoes, on tectonic fault lines, and at the coast) and human impacts on the environment at the local, regional and global scale, however, have altered the likelihood and magnitude of certain types of natural hazards. This has brought the vulnerability of societies to natural hazards into sharp focus over recent decades. In October 2020, the UN Office on Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) reported that, over the past two decades, 1.23 million people had lost their lives in a total of 7,348 ‘disaster events’ that had been recorded globally (with floods (40% of occurrences), storms (28%), earthquakes (8%), and extreme temperatures (6%) as the four most impactful types of hazard). In our efforts to reduce the human and economic impact of such events, an understanding of the reasons for their occurrence, their spatial and temporal variability, the degree to which they are ‘natural’ as opposed to ‘anthropogenic’ as well as past and potential future societal responses to such events is critical. This course addresses the above aspects beginning with an introduction to ‘natural’ hazards and general concepts or risk and vulnerability. The introductory lectures are then followed by lectures, targeted reading and discussion groups. Finally, students explore case studies highlighting past, present, and potential future societal solutions for the mitigation of the impact of natural hazards with guest speakers bringing an applied natural hazard and risk management perspective to this course.

This creative writing course is intended for students with a strong interest in writing poetry and developing their artistic craft. In this course, students begin the work of critically assessing contemporary poetry as practicing poets. It explores some key concerns of contemporary poetry, including race, sexuality and the environment, and covers a range of poets working in both traditional and non-traditional forms. Using sample poems provided in class, alongside critical materials, students develop an informed critical idiom for the discussion and critique of contemporary poetry, and also work towards writing a small portfolio of their own poems. Students must be willing to produce new poems to deadline, and be prepared to have their work discussed in class. It is the responsibility of students to offer constructive and considered feedback to their peers during these weekly sessions. *Students are required to submit an application for this course.