Ireland

The course teaches students about the process of social innovation, and how do develop and work within a temporary innovation system. It explores how processes of social innovation are used to address key societal challenges, focusing on topics such as housing and homelessness or development of nature-based solutions for sustainable cities. Students learn how to engage with key individuals within the fields of social innovation and social change in Ireland and abroad, including academics, practitioners and activists, and record and disseminate their interaction with them.

This course explores the geological record of key groups of plant and animals, and what this reveals about their evolutionary biology. The course also discusses how this date informs on the macroevolution of these groups and the different applications in earth and environmental science, including relative dating of rocks, reconstructing paleoenvironments including how ecosystems respond to environmental change at local to global scales.

This course explores critical scholarship in Irish music, drawing on writings in ethnomusicology, cultural geography, music studies and Irish studies. Emphasis is given to traditional music styles and performances from 1970 to the 21st century in Irish traditional music, examining key canonical figures and significant recordings/events heralding new Irish identities.

This course covers the skills and knowledge necessary to carry out a collaborative research study in small groups to perform a literature search on a given topic; design a short research study; collect responses to create a data set; analyze collected data, using descriptive analysis (for example, means and standard deviations) for inclusion in a final research report; and individually, to write a final research report. Computer-based workshops give students practical experience and competence in working with data entry and descriptive analysis.