Leiden University College

This course provides an introduction to the field of socio-legal studies. Socio-legal scholars are concerned with law in action and how law relates to society and social change. To this end, socio-legal scholars adopt a more interdisciplinary perspective to analyzing the law. This course examines key themes, insights, and methods from the field, drawing on different countries and contexts.

This course systematically examines the social, cultural, and pragmatic factors of language in context. Having a grasp of how these factors interact in a given language and in intercultural communication is crucial to the development of mutual understanding in the global world. The course explores the concepts of language, ideology, power, and identity on a micro-interactional (family, workplace, educational, legal settings) as well as macro-interactional level (language in the public sphere, in politics and the media). Seeing that the course participants are global citizens themselves, their viewpoints, experiences and opinions are crucial to developing an understanding of communication in the globalized world. Aside from being introduced to theoretical concepts, ideas and state-of-the-art studies in the field, one of the main aims of this course is for its participants to be able to discuss and analyze language from a sociolinguistic perspective. The course discusses topics including the intricate links between language and society; the concepts related to language change and variation, politeness, and impoliteness across cultures, and language ideologies; issues concerning the sociolinguistics of globalization and intercultural communication; the role of language in various spheres of everyday life (politics, media, health and education, economy); how cultural context affects the use and the (mis)interpretation of language; communication strategies that come into play in intercultural interactions in today’s globalized world; and conduct their own preliminary analysis of linguistic landscapes in their surroundings and apply the concepts presented in class with understanding the complexity of everyday language use.

This course aims to explore the theme of Earth processes and in particular to address the chemistry and physics based actors in System Earth. This course explores the principal components of System Earth: plate tectonic theory; rocks, water, and weathering; and time scales of System Earth. By going through a selection of calculated examples a deeper understanding of the processes involved is obtained. The course focuses first on the dynamics of planet Earth, the principal building blocks of the solid Earth, and introduces plate tectonic theory as the underlying paradigm; time scales and rates of processes are introduced. The second part of the course first studies carbonate dissolution and the role of atmospheric CO2 on the pH of natural waters. In the next step the course introduces the anthropogenic factor: the chemical reactions that contribute to the formation of acid rain, and the course proceeds to quantify the effect of acid rain on natural waters. Thermodynamics gives us the tools to quantify chemical reactions. Weathering reactions of basement rock in the acidic environments forms clay minerals. The process of clay mineral formation in turn can be linked to the formation of mineral resources such as bauxite. The final leg of the course introduces isotope geochemistry and its role in quantifying Earth processes: radioactive decay as a tool to measure time and isotope fractionation as a tool to document temperature fluctuations, and thus climate change in the past.