Utrecht University

This course focuses on the fundamental financial theories and applications that explain how investors, managers, corporations and other market participants interact and behave in the financial markets and what affects and drives their decisions, as well as the implication of those decisions and interactions. It also considers how corporate financial managers make financing decisions and manage financial risks. The course covers several major aspects of financial analysis and decision making that are important to modern corporations, including the valuation of projects and securities, capital structure choice, working capital management, and the management of international risks. While many of the theories and tools in financial management assume well-functioning capital markets with rational economic agents, the course also covers alternative perspectives based on key insights from the field of Behavioral Finance.

This course deepens knowledge of organic chemistry and organic synthesis in relation to drug molecules. Medicinal chemistry deals with the discovery, design, identification, and synthesis of drug molecules, and with the study of the relationships between the structure of a drug molecule and its behavior in the body. By looking at five major diseases, the organic synthesis and pharmacology of several drug molecules for treating these diseases are explored. A full year of Organic Chemistry is required for admission.

Growth and Development builds on concepts and theories presented in some first and second year courses, such as Multidisciplinary Economics and Intermediate Macroeconomics. The course takes a multidisciplinary approach to explore the relationship between growth, poverty, and development. The course starts by reviewing theories of modern economic growth including the Solow and Lewis models. We complement and build on the Intermediate Macroeconomics course, which covers short-run business cycles, by examining long run processes of economic growth and explaining persistent differences in income levels around the world. The primary focus is on developing countries.  Second, the course reviews the measurement of poverty and inequality and their relationship with economic growth. Third, the course discusses the role of trade and institutions in shaping development trajectories. Fourth, problems of human development facing developing countries today, including issues related to demographic transitions, health, and education are analyzed. Fifth, green growth and the necessity of environmental sustainability are analyzed. And lastly, the course concludes with a discussion of the aid effectiveness debate.

This course investigates contemporary globalization and its linkage with some crucial social and cultural processes. Catalysts of globalization and sociocultural complexity are critically assessed, especially the 'new' media. Furthermore, the effects of global interconnectedness are explored by dissecting phenomena like migration, the upsurge of religious movements, and the rise of transnationalism. Interrelated issues addressed in the series of lectures involve community formation, identity construction, cultural innovation versus cultural survival, and the shifting relationship between agency and structure. As such, 'Globalization and sociocultural complexity' should be regarded an introduction to current anthropology that logically follows 'Culturele Antropologie 2' in its aim to deepen students' understanding of theoretical approaches to, and the ethnography of, present-day's highly intricate social realities.

This course discusses the functioning of both the EU and the UN as normative power intergovernmental organizations. Do they really deserve to be labelled as such? And if so, what extent have they been successful as keepers of international peace? The EU’s Commission and Council and the UN’s Security Council, General Assembly and Human Rights at the hand of both historical and actual cases are assessed. Do not expect a clear “yes” or “no”,  but come to learn what the limits and opportunities of the EU and the UN as prominent IGO’s in the field of international politics are and even more important: come to learn how to start your own research on both normative powers by using both secondary and primary sources, including the necessary theoretical toolkit on how to interpret them. 

This course focuses on the relationships between language and society with special focus on those areas where Dutch is spoken. Questions about language variation are central to the course. How and why does variation emerge? What social, individual, and linguistic factors are important? Concepts addressed include standard language, accent and dialect, youth language, ethnolect, gender differences in language and gendered language as well as the differences between language variation and language change, linguistic style differences, racist and sexist language and the social meaning and function of language differences. Other topics include language planning, multilingualism, codeswitching, the status of minority languages and their role in education, language loss and language shift among migrants.

This course examines the role of the body in human cognition, through what has come to be known as the 4E (embodied, enactive, embedded and extended) approach to cognition. 4E cognition theories are radically opposed to dualism – the binary division between mind and body, prominent over millennia of Western philosophy – and view the currently dominant computational models of cognition as problematically preserving some aspects of it. From this perspective, the brain is now understood as a part of a broader system: physical, embodied interaction with our environment is a crucial and inseparable part of how thought and meaning making take place. Embodied approaches to cognition see thought, perception, and action as interwoven. They suggest an innovative approach to cognition as a dynamic process, emerging from the interaction between human minded-bodies (or bodyminds) and their lived environments. In addition to embodied and enactive, the mind is thus treated as extended beyond the brain and embedded in relationality to the outside world. Thinking is not something purely abstract that occurs with new ‘sense data’ entering the closed system of our heads, interpreted there and expressed in our behavior: it is a constant, multi-layered process, keenly involving our bodies and the world we inhabit, that is enacted in our consciousness and perceptual experience. This perspective has paved the way for new intersections and collaborations between cognitive science and the arts and humanities. 4E approaches shed new light on questions of experience and understanding in the arts and humanities, and vice versa: newly emerging collaborations between the arts and humanities and cognitive studies contribute to further understanding of the role of the body in how we experience, make sense and think. Art has long been a field where meaning is communicated, experienced, and explored through tangible images, bodies, objects, environments and movements, where understanding and inspiration are not purely mental and abstract but take place through embodied encounters with the world. Art is, therefore, of immense potential value for furthering our understanding of embodied aspects of the mind. In this course case studies from different forms of art and media as gateways to concretize and better grasp this theoretical perspective through are discussed.

This is a foundation course in Cell Biology. The first part of the course focuses on the molecules that serve as building blocks for cellular components and the chemical reactions by which these molecules are formed or broken down. Special attention is given to proteins, since these molecules are so fundamental to cell function. Next, the concept and process of cell specialization in multicellular organisms is studied by examining how cells maintain, copy, transcribe and translate their genetic material. Cellular organization is studied in the second part of the course. How different cellular components are delivered to the right location and how intercellular communication and cell division take place are reviewed. In addition to acquiring knowledge about the safe handling of microorganisms and cells in laboratory settings, the relevant laws and regulations in the Netherlands about this subject are reviewed. For this purpose, 2 lectures, 2 practicals, an eLearning module, and digital end test are organized. If the end test is completed successfully, students get a certificate indicating they can work in biological laboratories (VMT-certificate).

This course discusses how typical spatial planning debates relate to wider societal challenges (i.e. planning as the “mirror of society”), but also to critically assess how spatial planning practices can therefore crystalize in very different ways from one planning context to the next. All of this is embedded in a thorough understanding of the fundamental concepts of urban and regional planning. Typical planning issues such as coordination between different spatial scales, sectoral and integrated planning approaches, dealing with scarcity, and flexibility vs. legal certainty are covered. Students are instructed through the pragmatic analytical concept of the planning triangle (object, process, context). This analytical framework helps to systematically relate the fundamental concepts of spatial planning to, on the one hand, the planning theoretical underpinnings and historical development of academic planning thought, and, on the other hand, to current planning dilemmas and practices in various planning systems (dominantly of the Netherlands, but also of other cases worldwide). Throughout the course, links are made to relevant planning methods and the role of the planner as ‘mediator’ in spatial planning processes. The course is structured around a series of lectures on basic concepts of spatial planning and putting these within the wider frame of current planning issues, theoretical debates and actual spatial planning practices and systems in the Netherlands and beyond. The lectures are supported by an academic handbook on spatial planning, that is in line with the pace and topics that are covered in the lectures. Students are encouraged to find supplementary academic and professional literature as theoretical underpinnings and empirical illustrations of their written products. The lectures and book are assessed by means of an individual written examination on the content of the course. Students work in groups on a jointly written group assignment.