Ireland

This course provides students with a systematic introduction to the transformation of work in the context of rapidly changing aspects of labor markets in advanced market economies. The changing structure of labor markets is associated with new technologies, deregulation, flexibilization, and individualization. Students examine the increasing participation and changing position of women on the labor market. They further examine theories and empirical findings regarding the divisions of paid and unpaid labor, precariousness and impermanence, labor market participation of women. Wage and career inequality are discussed with a special emphasis on the interplay of individual decisions and formal and informal societal institutions. Students examine jobs, employers and careers/life cycle issues in a globalizing world, and the possible consequences of the rise of digitalization and artificial intelligence for the world of work.

Cities are very important spaces within which complex economic, political, cultural, and environmental processes are produced and experienced. This course introduces students to urbanization from a global perspective. The objective is to understand contemporary processes of urban change in historical perspective from both the global north and the global south. The course draws on case studies and examples from South America, North America, Europe, South Africa, and Asia to exemplify key themes in urban studies including industrialization, suburbanization, global cities, inequality, and sustainability.

The key question of this course is how freedom is compatible with the authority of the state. During the course, students look at some classical responses to this question as well as to the related questions of how to organize statehood in a way that balances concerns for liberty, equality, and community. In exploring the theoretical foundations of today’s debates on these issues, students initially focus on a selection of historical thinkers from the pre-Enlightenment period onwards, later bringing the debate more up to date with scholarship by more modern thinkers.

In this course, students discuss how, findings from the study of human behavior have been applied to policy concerns in a substantive and sustained way, and how behavioral scientists are increasingly playing a much greater role in policy making across a range of sectors. 

This course engages with literary and theoretical texts that stage and reflect on the political dimensions of noise, following the transformations of its theory and practice in the course of history.