Ireland

This course argues for the importance of animals in the history of human society and culture. It examines the evolution of human and animal relationships, the role of animals in agriculture and society, animals in war, conquest, and empire, and the interconnected histories of human, animal, and environmental health. It analyzes the historical construction of the categories of "human" and "animal," and its implications for medicine, science, and animal rights. Themes examined include a history of domestication, animals as vectors of illness and plague in the Middle Ages, the Scientific Revolution and animal experimentation, the discovery of America and the Columbian Exchange, the emergence of animal rights in the 19th century, and animals, extinction, and climate change in the 20th and 21st centuries. 

Coastal regions are some of the most dynamic on Earth, not least because human and natural processes act in tight connection to each other. This dynamism poses one of the great societal challenges of the 21st Century. Building upon a basic, foundational knowledge of ocean and coastal processes covered in relevant courses within the first and second year ("Spaceship Earth" and "Physical Geography: Dynamic Earth"), students gain wide ranging theoretical and practical skills required to address those challenges. The lectures and seminars take students on a journey that highlights how the natural processes operating within estuaries and on coasts are a function of external factors (past and present climate, geology, human influences) and feedbacks in which the landforms themselves affect the operation of processes that shape the landforms. Equipped with this knowledge, and several examples from around the world, students put their knowledge into practice. A day field trip and practical exercise challenges students to apply what they have learnt to real-world coastal management problems. 

Project management and leadership skills are relevant to all people throughout their professional and personal lives. Many people think that only "senior" people in an organization or society are leaders. This course emphasizes on leadership skills that everyone can acquire. These leadership skills are directly relevant to daily life as a student and to all careers. Students focus on real life practical problems and how to address them. They work in teams when addressing typical problems project managers face. Students also become familiar with Microsoft Project (or similar package) as a tool to help in project management.
 

This course examines information systems and the social context of information and communication in organizations. Consideration is given to information systems requirements and design, information processes and flows in organizations, and the character of formal information systems and informal communication patterns. Emphasis is placed on contextual design principles of contextual inquiry and communication in computer-mediated communication and computer-supported cooperative work.

Students explore the ideas of "rural" and "rurality," how these ideas are constructed, and evaluates different definitions of these terms. It identifies both historical and ongoing processes that shape (and cause conflict) in rural spaces. As part of the European Union, Ireland is subject to a wide range of EU policies that influence agricultural, environmental, economic, and social sustainability. These policies and their impacts are discussed in conjunction with issues and processes that underpin rural decline.

This course offers an introductory survey of the development and major artistic achievements of Roman art and architecture from the early Republic to the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian in the early 2nd century AD. The course places art and architecture in its social, political, and cultural context. It explores themes such as the representation of the human form, the use of narrative and mythology in art, urbanization, and the development of architectural forms such as temples, commemorative monuments, and buildings for spectacle and leisure with attention to some of the iconic buildings and sites of the ancient world, such as the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and Pompeii.

This course introduces the theory of performance, analyzing how an understanding of performance in everyday life, and in culture, gives a context for the study of performance in theater. Students learn basic tools of performance analysis, to develop the practice of analysis in practical sessions, and to discuss lecture materials in small group teaching. The course offers an introduction to ways of examining, reflecting on, and critically evaluating the phenomenon of performance in a highly technologized and globalized world.

This course offers a theoretically and methodologically informed analysis of culture, art and literature drawing on sociology and anthropology. Students are introduced to key sociological and anthropological concepts which facilitate the interpretation of art-works as both reflective of society and potentially transformative – whether literary, cinematic, musical, or whatever sort – including liminality, play, and social performativity. Effectively, these suggest that by creating imaginative spaces of narrative and symbolism, art can consider elements of society, and variously re-think and re-evaluate them, or even critique them.

The course equips students with an understanding of engineering approaches to advanced biomedical imaging. It strongly focuses understanding the physical processes that occur between a particular imaging modality and the biological material being investigated. This course introduces the physical concepts of advanced medical imaging via lectures focused on specific imaging modalities. Lectures cover various imaging techniques to provide an advanced understanding of the physics of the signal and its interaction with biological tissue; image formation or reconstruction; modality-specific issues for image quality; clinical applications; and biological effects and safety. This course uses state-of-the-art emerging imaging modalities in research and engineering approaches to advance such techniques to the clinic.  

Cosmology traces developments in the mythological and natural-scientific study of the universe in its complex history. This course presents these developments as they have been interpreted from biblical, theological, and philosophical perspectives, and the conditions under which they have been understood to conflict or converge with cosmologies from the natural sciences, particularly since the 16th century. It explores how specific cosmologies emerged and in turn impacted on theology, science and culture, in astronomy, thermodynamics, emerging universe models, evolutionary theory and the return to narrative in the natural sciences. It includes implications for anthropology: the human person as created in the image of God (imago Dei); as embodied and free, contingent and subject to frailty and failure (“sin”); as "steward" of creation; and as inhabitant of the earthly cosmopolis.