Ireland

This course introduces students to the field of social psychology and the principles underlying group and individual interaction.  It presents the historical and philosophical roots of social psychology in the context of the current state of the discipline.  Students become acquainted with debates and tensions between different schools within social psychology and are presented with critiques of the discipline. The course presents the richness, complexity, and variety of human social behavior and the discipline that studies it in a conceptually integrated way. 

This course develops students’ core social policy skills, including critical analysis, argument development, and the use of an evidence-informed approach. The course introduces students to key social policy issues including activation policy, universal basic income, and the gender pay gap. Students are challenged to practice and develop the skills they have learned by engaging critically with these topics. Students are supported to critically appraise how explanations of and solutions to social issues may be influenced by analysis of evidence and competing perspectives.

This course builds on the formal analysis skills introduced in FS10010 Introduction to Film and Media. Students are introduced to key theoretical ideas about film and media and a variety of approaches to interpreting and understanding film, television, and digital media in context. Topics may include gender, race, sexuality, industry, and audiences, among others. The course includes case studies in film, television, and other media forms.

This course explores the cultural impact which selected high-profile true crime narratives have had upon works of literature, non-fiction, popular literature and film. It explores the various ways in which certain real life crimes have inspired a range of cultural responses. The course incorporates weeks on classic non-fiction true crime texts as well as works of memoir, film, literary fiction and popular fiction which have been inspired by real-life cases. Additionally, students engage with the current true-crime podcasting landscape and other true crime media. 

This course enables students to explore various aspects of Irish culture and identity in an interdisciplinary and interactive manner, focusing specifically on society, literature and language. Students are introduced to key themes, debates, texts, influences and events that help to provide a greater understanding of how Ireland evolved into the country it is today. The course examines how the language of place and space relates to society; Ireland's Celtic influences; the evolution from manuscript to print culture; the tradition of oral narrative; and literary representations of Ireland in both the English and Irish languages, from early modern sources through to twentieth and twenty-first century texts.

The course provides an introduction to the essentials of computer game development. The process of development by small independents, even single individuals, shares important features with development by large companies: innovation, creativity, storyboarding, software development, testing, deployment, and (sometimes) marketing. Topics include the economic importance of the computer game industry; common genres of games; the development of game software using specialized tools which promote rapid development through their integration of numerous prepackaged components; techniques for representing objects in 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional space, and determining whether they collide; techniques for equipping non-player characters with AI; techniques for producing special effects; gamification, that is, the provision of enjoyably game-like experience to promote education or customer loyalty or other purposes. 

This course considers both the theoretical and practical questions which arise in this evolving area of the law. Initially, the course examines the role of the media in a constitutional democracy. The constitutional protection of the media in Ireland is compared with similar regimes in other jurisdictions with particular emphasis on the jurisprudence of the European Convention of Human Rights. The course addresses a number of specific areas of media law. Lectures deal with topics such as privacy, contempt of court, the protection of journalistic sources, obscenity, blasphemy, and the regulatory regimes in Ireland and in the EU. Throughout the course, lectures explore the issues raised by the rise of new media forms like the internet.
 

In this course, students are introduced to a range of modernist authors from a variety of contexts and working in various genres and modes, including poetry, fic on, and the essay.  They learn how to recognize and articulate different conceptualizations of literary modernism from the early 20th century to the present. Students articulate the differences and interrelationships between some of the key figures of literary modernism across a range of cultural contexts. Students explore the debates regarding the multiple possible ways of defining literary modernisms. They gain a clear sense of how literary modernisms fit in within the literary histories of English, European, and US American literature. 

Religion is prominent in public debates, in the media, and in the cultural imaginary of people's daily life, no matter whether they see themselves as believers or not. In turn, religions also “make use” of media and mediation, creating symbolic representations and special experiences, be it through architecture and music, images and narratives, or through clothes and body practices. The course focuses on how the relationship between religion and media can be studied, and how this can help to better understand the role of religion in the public sphere. Our understanding of media reaches beyond TV and the internet – scripture and dance, money, and microphones are means of mediating religion as well. The course explores what a medium is; how religions are depicted in the media; how religions act on and react to new media; and how religions can be understood as mediation while often claiming to provide “immediate” and direct access to divine spheres.

In high value added manufacturing industry, engineers are required to understand how mechanical systems and materials behave at length scales at the micron level. This course develops the student’s skills and knowledge in both precision engineering and micro engineering. The course considers the selected topics in precision, micromanufacturing, ranging from enabling technologies, and processes to applications. This is research-lead, hence the content can vary on a year-to-year basis. Currently, most of the course focuses on LASER based manufacturing, LASER-Additive Manufacturing (3D printing) with metallic materials, and related automation.