Utrecht University

Young people's sexual development, behavior, and upbringing have changed drastically over the past few decades. While sex used to be a topic people simply would not talk about as short as 50 years ago – especially when it came to youth - young people's sexual health had become a priority in research and public health policy today. While many concerns exist about young people's sexuality (e.g., regarding the impact of exposure to Internet porn and online dating apps), the sexual health of youth in the Netherlands is relatively good, compared to many other countries. Recent research even suggests that young people's sexual health has improved over the past decade. This raises the question to what extent societal developments relate to young people's sexual development and behavior. This course analyzes young people's sexual development and behavior. It does so by addressing different theoretical models explaining young people's sexual behavior (e.g., the evolutionary, socio-constructivist, and bio-psycho-social model); analyzing potential determinants and consequences of (un)healthy sexual behavior; and linking scientific research to (recent-) societal developments and debates, both in the Netherlands and worldwide. Lectures are provided by experts from a variety of organizations, including Utrecht University, Rutgers, the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP), and the University of Amsterdam.

This course focuses on the practices which contribute to good public governance. Students are empowered as future public leaders with the analytical skills to assess success and the practical skills to communicate the results of their analyses to both academic and applied audiences, in a range of policy domains. Firstly, the theoretical and practical concepts of success in public policies, public agencies, collaborations, and in local government are discussed. Each week, students work in groups to write and present blog posts (to be published on the Successful Public Governance research program web site). These memo-style blog entries begin as syntheses of canonical works, and advance through the term towards highlighting theoretical controversies and empirical applications, with the goal of developing innovative arguments and insights into the literature(s) on governance success. This format prepares students for positions of leadership in a range of disciplines by requiring not only thorough theoretical fluency and application familiarity, but also the ability to accessibly contextualize and communicate analytical results to academic and practitioner audiences.

This course furthers knowledge of grammatical theorizing, building on introductory linguistics courses. It focuses on methodological rigor, and addresses language variation from a typological perspective. Morphological and syntactic research in the last decennia has convincingly proven that it is possible to explain language phenomena in a wide variety of languages with a limited set of abstract principles interacting in a way that one can describe as “unity in diversity”. This course shows how syntax (and morphology) provide on the one hand an instrument for the principles of scientific theorizing and scientific thought, while on the other hand, how one can apply these tools to address language variation, and can steer research in acquisition and psycholinguistics. In this course students learn how to apply the core principles in the morphology and syntax of natural language when analyzing diverse material from a range of language, using different empirical courses, including corpora, databases, grammars, etc.

This course consists of two parts. Part I introduces the essential ecological principles and concepts at its different aggregation levels, from individual organism to ecosystem. Part II highlights how these concepts and principles underlie global sustainability challenges and how an understanding of ecology can contribute to solving these challenges. The course covers a broad diversity of challenges, ranging from the sixth extinction to ecological restoration and management of overabundant populations. The course draws on examples from both the global North and the global South and as such contribute to the international character of the curriculum and the emphasis on global sustainability challenges.

This course examines the various human rights responses under international law to mass atrocities committed in communities around the world (a field known as transitional justice); the development of transitional justice and how it operates within the broader peace-building field; the historical development of transitional justice, the various justice processes that may be employed, and how they operate in theory as well as practice; societies in transition in contemporary settings and the applicable laws and legal processes.

 

 

 

We are currently living through a communications revolution: the proliferation of the internet and the rapid growth of online communication over the past decades has undeniably changed our society, but it is not clear yet where this process is headed and which consequences it has for Western culture. This course puts this transformative process into historical context by comparing it with the rise of other mass media technologies and how they have shaped our modern world. Through comparison students learn to understand and predict the consequences of the rise of the internet for modern culture. This course considers mass media as cultural phenomena: books, newspapers, the telegraph, television or the internet are not just technologies, but also include historically specific practices and knowledge. This course provides an overview of how various mass media have shaped modern culture and society. However, mass media has not only helped to spread the images, ideas, concepts, and values that constitute modern culture (such as rationalism, nationalism, and the idea of progress), but they are themselves important symbols of modernity. This course critically investigates the cultural impact of these mass media technologies and the way they have been represented throughout modern history, asking questions such as: Who really used these technologies and how were they consumed? How are they constructed discursively through literature, laws, images, etc.? What happens to a society's culture (its religious, political, cultural texts), when it is increasingly mediated by these technologies?

This course focuses on technological developments in various fields of application. The course discusses these technological developments in terms of their ethical legitimacy and uses them to reflect on interesting philosophical concepts from fields of moral psychology and anthropology. The course explores questions such as: Does AI influence our view on technology and humanity? What impact does datafication have on our social networks and autonomous self? What should we think of persuasive technologies (like nudging)? How do our views on the self, others, and technology change our views on democracy as well? Students gain insight into ethical debates in the context of research and technology and apply philosophical concepts in normal theories, moral psychology, and anthropology. Students reflect on the notion of responsible innovation and develop an independent position on ethics and technology.

In this course the use of different media sources, (1) gaming and online videos, (2) social media, and (3) music, are discussed in relation to adolescents' development. The central themes of adolescent development relevant to this course are psychological wellbeing (e.g. life satisfaction, happiness, behavioral problems), social relationships (e.g. parents, peers), identity, emotion and motivation (e.g. reasons for use, habits). This course evaluates the position of digital media in youth lifestyle and youth culture, and reflects on the influence digital media has on the development of adolescents.

This course addresses the conceptual history of Europe. Its key focus lies on the notion that European history is a process driven by conflicting visions of historical actors on the past, present, and future of Europe. In this course, students learn to recognize the variety of normative meanings that politicians, administrators, activists and intellectuals have attributed to Europe and related concepts such as “Mitteleuropa” and the “German Question.” The following topics are covered: cultural unity based on Roman and Christian foundations versus cultural diversity; the translation of the vision of Europe into a political reality; tension between national sovereignty and European unity; the integration of Germany into the European state system. In group discussions students discuss the ways in which these historically laden concepts continue to exert influence on contemporary political debates.