Sciences Po Reims

This course debates contemporary issues in a Socratic manner inspired by Michel Sandel's lectures and Ian Shapiro's views on Enlightenment philosophy, which placed great faith in the power of human reason to understand the true nature of our circumstances and the idea of progress in human affairs as means to control, and perhaps even improve, our environments and our lives. Through different roles, students adopt different positions to think about sensitive issues related to conflictual situations from points of view that are not necessarily based on their personal convictions. Topics are inspired from the Council of Foreign Affairs: What is a Moral Foreign Policy.

This course provides a solid and global understanding of contemporary developments and challenges in the field of energy. It provides insight and overview to the particularities of the oil and gas industry, climate developments, renewables, the electricity sector, energy efficiency, and international energy affairs. Resource management in major producing countries is outlined. Energy economics and regulation is discussed both for renewable and non-renewable resources, for the environment and the prospects for a greener economy.

This course offers an individual and collective occasion to master research, planning, and writing abilities to make sense of recent developments in connection and comparison with each other by using several political-historical methods. It trains students to interpret and deconstruct contemporary and past events with an original gaze by asking well-defined research questions; conducting research using traditional sources such as archives, as well as digital techniques; collecting, citing, and quoting sources; and bringing their findings together using analytical, historiographical, and conceptual tools. Connections are made between cases in international and global arena, supported by the findings through archival research, interviews, interdisciplinary approach, and the review of press and secondary literature. By adopting a critical review of their findings, students follow and comprehend sophisticated academic debates; take cultural, contextual, and ideological differences into consideration; work with techniques offered by multiple disciplines; report on their studies and research; and learn time management.