Ireland

The course equips students with a critical understanding of the major issues facing the European economy. The course provides a blend of descriptive information, theory, and empirical analysis. The emphasis is on economic issues but these issues are studied in their political, institutional, and historical context. Theoretical analysis forms an essential part of the course and requires knowledge of intermediate micro- and macroeconomics. Attention is devoted to some policy areas in which EU co-ordination has progressed furthest: internal market, regional policy, factor mobility, agriculture, and competition policy. The course is suitable for any student who has taken Economics and all Visiting Students who have acquired an equivalent level of Economics training.

In this course course, students learn to appreciate the interaction between self-regulation and statutory regulation; get a feel of how Rule of Law is different from specific laws; learn about the legislative process and how government is held accountable; explore how the judiciary shapes law through interpretation, oversight, and review, and discuss pragmatic and political concerns that animate policy-making.

This course covers spectrographic analysis of vowel formants and the plotting of these in acoustic vowel space; spectrographic analysis of plosives and fricatives; the use of nasometry, static and dynamic palatography, and ultrasound; normal swallowing mechanism and swallowing problems in the pediatric population.

This course explores the main theoretical strands in the contemporary study of international relations. Students are introduced to several key approaches in the study of international relations, including realism, neorealism, Marxism, liberalism, and interdependence theory and democratic peace theory, and to the central empirical questions these seek to address: Are states the only significant actors in world politics? Is the international system constituted in a way that makes war sometimes inevitable? Is the international conduct of many states guided more by economic objectives than by the quest for military security? Are democracies set never to go to war against one another? Is war partially rooted in human psychology? What are the political consequences of growing social and economic interaction between states and societies? 

The course is an introduction to the study of comparative politics and provides an overview of some of the key theoretical frameworks, concepts, and analytical methods of this field of study. We study democratic political systems with a view to understanding and explaining their differences and similarities with respect to their political institutions, the behaviour of their key political actors, and their policymaking processes and performance. The course examines the building blocks of the comparative approach. We describe, explain and examine the consequences of different political institutions, with a focus on established democracies, including executive-legislative relations, electoral systems, and strong judiciaries.

This course explores the oceanographic and ecological processes that underpin marine ecosystems and their associated biodiversity and functioning. Topics include characteristic features of different marine ecosystems (e.g. rocky shores, coral reefs, deep seas); application (fisheries and aquaculture), and human impacts on marine ecosystems (disturbances, pollution and climate change).