Leiden University College

Stress is a major determinant of global public health. Stress has been called a “health epidemic of the twenty-first century” by the World Health Organization and is associated with massive humanitarian, medical, and economic costs. This course introduces the basic principles of how our body's health is threatened by psychosocial stressors as diverse as daily worries, work stress, low social economic status, discrimination, and natural disasters. A major role is played by psychological factors such as perceived control, and conscious and unconscious thoughts, and emotions. The lectures cover the many ways in which the mind influences the body during stress, including the cardiovascular, hormonal and immune systems, metabolism, sleep, growth, ageing, reproduction, and sex. The course discusses stress management and recent contributions from the field of emotion regulation. Stress is not a “luxury problem” of the industrialized countries; it is also, and perhaps even more so, a leading health risk in less developed countries. Therefore, the course also explores the global relevance of stress and health. There is hardly a concept that is so ill defined in and outside science and at the same time so important for our health as stress. Not surprisingly the media are teeming with erroneous information about its effect on health. Students learn how to systematically gather information about stress and health thereby training the essential academic skill of distinguishing scientific knowledge from omnipresent unsupported claims in the rapidly accumulating information volume in the media (especially internet), and evaluating this knowledge in terms of its meaning for public health. This course requires students to have completed an introduction to psychology course as a prerequisite.

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the law and practice of international dispute settlement. The course begins with an introduction to the obligation to settle international disputes peacefully and an overview of the fundamental principles of dispute settlement. The course then explores the non-judicial means of dispute settlement: negotiation, mediation, good offices, inquiry, and conciliation. Thereafter, the course focuses on the judicial settlement of disputes by international courts and tribunals, in particular the International Court of Justice, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea dispute settlement mechanisms, the dispute settlement procedures and mechanisms of the World Trade Organization, and arbitral tribunals in both inter-State and investor-State disputes. The course concludes by addressing select issues related to international dispute settlement, namely provisional measures, landmark cases (such as the South China Sea arbitration), and contemporary issues such as compliance with judicial and arbitral decisions, and the politics of international investment law. Throughout the course, not only the “law,” but also the “politics” of dispute settlement are addressed.

This course offers an introduction to the theories and debates in policy studies, public policy analysis, comparative politics, international relations, political economy, sociology, and development economics. As such, the course does not aim to provide concrete policy answers in many cases to longstanding policy debates and questions, but instead intellectually guides students to think through these big questions. The overarching goal in this course is to understand why there is no “one size fits all” policy solutions. That means there's no generic solution. But there are some key principles to help find the right policy in the right situation, and history to learn from. The class consists of three modules. Module one focuses on the fundamentals of the politics of the policy process. Here, the course explores the intersection between politics and public policy, the usefulness and criticisms of the policy cycle, the role of official and unofficial actors in the policy-making process, as well as the major theories of the policy process. Module two reviews major factors and causes that account for variation in policy outcomes across countries. Importantly, the course discusses and analyzes the factors that explain variation in public policies across countries and the domestic context of policymaking in both developed and developing countries. Lastly, in module three, the course concludes by empirically reviewing the highly contested topics that animate today’s public debates, such as immigration and citizenship, education, health care, and welfare policies.