Health Sciences

Health and disease are shaped by social, cultural, political, and technological forces and inextricably linked with questions of science, technology, modernity, religion, colonialism, capitalism, racism, globalization, humanitarianism, and the state. This course focuses on recent developments towards the pharmaceuticalization of health, the molecularization of life, the commodification of the body, the privatization of medical care, and the securitization of public health. These developments have fundamentally transformed today's landscape of therapeutic governance in fundamental ways.

This course explores the changing relationships between health, lifestyles, and the city in both historical and contemporary contexts across the Global North and South. Focusing on a wide range of case studies, the course will critically examine the emergence of the idea of "lifestyle" as an explicit public health concern and, in addition, an object of geographic analysis. The creation of lifestyle as a problem to be addressed comes as part of a wider acknowledgement of the capacity of certain features of urban landscapes to perpetuate the risk of certain "lifestyle" conditions such as obesity that result from an amalgam of factors including sedentary behavior and poor diets, perpetuated by the risks presented by the places in which people live, work, travel, and play. 

This course  examines the theories and evidence underpinning social inequalities in health (defined as the unfair and avoidable differences in health status). It considers structural/material and psychosocial theories, and hypotheses about social drift, self-selection, and genetics. Attention is given to the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health. Sources of data and measurement of scale of inequalities between and within groups are addressed. The course considers the distribution of wealth, income , resources, and power at global, national, and local levels. Redistributive mechanisms work through either government or market control, and the economic implications for inequalities are compared and analyzed. Policy interventions and their different approaches are explored including universal and targeted or selective approaches to reducing inequalities by reducing the inequitable distribution of power, money, and resources.

This course examines how to make informed food choices. It covers myth of common diets, supplements and fads touted by the media, the anatomy and physiology of digestion, the link between common diseases and nutrition practices, nutrition for sports performance, practical tips for shopping and cooking and the use of food to improve cognition.

Our increased longevity is one of the major achievements of modern humans, however this increase in lifespan does not necessarily mean an increase in health span – healthy, disease-free years. Students will explore some of the key challenges and opportunities associated with the expanding ageing population. They will use a multi-disciplinary approach (biological, clinical, societal) to explore several key questions such as: what happens the body during ageing that leaves us more susceptible to developing diseases such as cardiovascular disease, neurocognitive decline and cancer in later life? Why do some people age faster than others? How do we manage this challenge clinically? Can new models of care and novel technologies facilitate independent living in later life? What is it like for someone to get older in Ireland today? How can we ensure that everyone has the opportunity to age successfully in our society? What are the legal, ethical and economical challenges that we will face?

This seminar provides students with a comprehensive insight into the evolution of language, encompassing both biological and cultural changes. We will explore thought-provoking questions based on language evolution theories, such as the distinctions between human and animal communication and the reasons behind humans' ability to acquire a vast vocabulary compared to our closest ancestors. Through an exploration of neurocognitive experimental research and incorporating insights from artificial neurocomputational modeling, we will investigate the underlying mechanisms in the human mind and brain that govern language processing, usage, and evolution. Additionally, we will place particular emphasis on linguistic pragmatics, a sub-discipline that examines language as a tool of communication in social contexts, drawing upon foundational concepts from analytical philosophy and linguistic pragmatic models. Throughout these discussions, we will explore factors such as social interaction, turn-taking, and the establishment of common ground. Furthermore, there will be planned visits to the electroencephalography (EEG) laboratory to provide hands-on experience with neurocognitive experiments, as well as a visit to the aphasia therapy center of the Brain Language Unit at the Freie Universität Berlin.

This course is designed for those who are studying healthy aging and/or geriatric rehabilitation. It includes an overview of the physical and psycho-behavioral aspects of aging in adulthood. This course focuses on normal and pathological changes with aging and provides an overview of geriatric care (treatment issues relevant to the types of older clients), delivering a framework for understanding individuals who have movement dysfunction secondary to age-related disease. Current motor control and motor learning theories are applied to intervention strategies for the geriatric population and students are strongly encouraged to develop themselves to serve the needs of the elderly population.

This course examines the concepts of ethics and equity, in a broad range of applications, including power, privilege and positionality; exploration of foundations of ethics as they apply to population and global health practice; and concepts of human rights, anti-racism, ethics and equity, informed by an understanding of the legacy of colonization, as they pertain to a wide array of global health issues.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. This course focuses on the main sociological concepts related to health, with a focus on the intersections between medicine and new technologies. More specifically, the course explores concepts including: medicalization, social determinants, health literacy, bio-socialities, genetization, and pharmaceuticalization. The course analyzes social phenomena related to health by sociological concepts, evaluates the consequences of the technology and social networks related to medicine from the standpoint of sociological theories, and analyzes the relationship between new technologies in the health field and social inequalities. Main concepts discussed in the course include: medicalization; health cultures and healthscapes; social theories for global health; prevention health risks; structural violence pharmachologization; wellbeing and mental health; biomedicalization; genetification; human enhancement; reflexive longevity; STS; digital health; sociology of diagnosis; neurochemical selves; quantified self, gamification, syndemic epidemics; and endemic future.