Environmental Studies

This course provides a sociological perspective on economic, social, and political processes, focusing especially on global social change and sustainable development. Students acquire the knowledge required to understand and critically examine the discussions pursued about the global social change that marks modernity, focusing especially on the post-war period. The course includes four modules, this is the second module: Contemporary Sociological Perspectives on Global Development. The second module focuses on contemporary challenges to development in different parts of the world. It adopts both a macro and a micro perspective reviewing changes regarding the role of the state, labor markets, population structures, and families. Sociological theories and concepts are used to highlight how inequality is created and maintained by different power structures with regard to, for example, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and class, and intersections between them. The module focuses on contemporary economic and political sociology and feminist theory.

The Individual Research Training Senior (IRT Senior) Course is an advanced course of the Individual Research Training A (IRT A) course in the Tohoku University Junior Year Program in English (JYPE) in the fall semester. Though short-term international exchange students are not degree candidates at Tohoku University, a similar experience is offered by special arrangement. Students are required to submit: an abstract concerning the results of their IRT Senior project, a paper (A4, 20-30 pages) on their research at the end of the exchange term, and an oral presentation on the results of their IRT Senior project near the end of the term.

This course provides an overview of fisheries science. It focuses on the fundamentals of fisheries science as it relates broadly to marine biology, from molecules to ecosystems. The course is divided into two sections: Topics on Marine Ecology and Oceanography, and Topics on Physiology, Biochemistry and Genetics of Aquatic organisms.

This course examines environmental history worldwide. Through selected topics, it explores how human society and technology have shaped the environment through centuries, emphasizing the major changes of the past hundred years. As part of the methodology, Barbados will be examined as a microcosm of the global concern with human impact in the environment. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. At the end of the course the student is able to evaluate the scientific basis of Earth’s past climate system, identify past states of the climate system that offer the closest analogs to the climates of the coming decades, and appreciate the scientific context for the long view on a warming world, based on the recognition of natural, past climate variability rather than mathematical models of future potential scenarios. The course consists of two modules. Module I focuses on pre-Quaternary examples of global climate changes, including quantitative methods for the study of past global changes, examples of rapid climate changes in the geological past, and the relationships between geodynamics, paleogeography, and climate. Module II focuses on climate variability during the Quaternary (glacial and post-glacial), with emphasis on the high-resolution signature of climate change in the stratigraphic record on millennial to centennial timescales, from quantitative dating methods to climate proxies.

This is a challenging interdisciplinary first-year course, based on a series of high-profile, evening lectures given by prominent members of staff from the three Colleges. The course engages students in thinking about the global challenges that confront society, and makes them aware of the role of academic research and scholarship in meeting these challenges. Students are expected to address key global issues across discipline boundaries, and develop an understanding of the relevance and impact of their own subject in the broader context. Students in the course attend the public lectures, research the topics in depth, participate in facilitated group discussions on each topic, work in small groups to produce a collaborative project on a chosen topic, and produce an individual research report on an aspect which may be closer to their own subject area. Our Changing World is a pass/fail grade-only course.

This course provides an overview of natural hazards such as floods, severe storms, droughts, multi-hazard interrelationships, the perception of natural hazards, and the complex relationship that exists between natural hazards and society. Lectures on specific hazards are addressing the basic theory for the creation and/or existence of each hazards, along with an understanding of some of the primary and secondary effectives (both negative and positive) of each hazard, including case study examples. 

The course provides an introduction to the science of the natural environment and gives an overview of the processes that shape the evolution of our environment. Topics include (1) global cycles that operate in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and cryosphere, and the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, water, and energy; (2) natural hazards and their impacts on human society and how these are monitored, assessed, and mitigated; and (3) natural resources exploitation focused on water, minerals, and fossil fuels, and the environmental issues associated with their extraction and use.