International Studies

The course examines the inter-relationships between the development of the international economy and the growth of national economies until the late 19th century. The course introduces students not only to a wide variety of topics and issues, but also to the wide variety of approaches used by historians. The course includes analyses of the original leading nation, Britain, and its replacement, the United States, as well as the catch-up of areas such as continental Europe, and the failure to catch-up of earlier well-placed areas such as Latin America. 

This course explores the key problems that the oceans are contemporarily facing and how global governors, law enforcement agencies, and other actors intend to address them. The course is organized in three blocks. In the first part, it revisits the contemporary foundations of ocean governance, including international organizations and the law of the sea. It then revisits the key contemporary ocean discourses. In part two, the course investigates major issues on the ocean agenda, such as shipping, fishing, piracy, smuggling, or deep seabed mining and how international actors address them. Following an independent writing period, the course concludes with a workshop where case studies are presented. The course is assessed on the basis of participation and the independent project.

This course explores the factors that have triggered the evolution of environmental law and governance beyond state (since the development of the UN Sustainable Development Goals), and how the theoretical approaches of environmental studies developed in that context. Additionally, it reflects on how and to what extent environmental law and governance can be resilient and adaptive in facing global challenges.

This course provides students with credit for professional and academic experience through internships with local organizations. While working at the internship site, students gain new abilities and skills and develop self-confidence from pursuing challenging goals. The academic component helps students navigate the challenges that they are likely to face while interning and afford them a greater understanding of their strengths and limitations related to their work experience and to Morocco. Students thereby get the opportunity to explore or affirm possible career aspirations. The Internship course provides students with a significant on-site work experience, both in terms of time spent and the tasks completed under the guidance of their mentors. The seminar develops their personal, interpersonal, and intercultural competences in order to maximize the gains from their internship placements. Furthermore, it broadens students’ perspectives of their international professional experience through a series of guided discussions, a professional journal, a final project, and presentations. The seminar helps students to evaluate and enhance their development in the workplace during their on-site work experience. Students explore and understand major professionally-related topics and develop their intercultural skills through interactive workshops and reflection of their work experience in the host culture.

This course focuses on the key issues in contemporary international relations., with the goal of learning the concepts and theories of IR useful to making sense of contemporary debates and developments in international politics. Focus is on the study of current events and the recent history that has shaped the international system, with specific attention devoted to foreign policy stances of big powers (the United States, China, and Russia), and to two topical international actors (the European Union and the United Nations). The second part of the course studies big trends and on-going international crises, including the rise of the Global South, the Ukraine War, and the Israel-Hamas conflict. This is followed by exploration of the four "Global challenges": energy security and climate change; migration; Africa's development; and digitalization and cybersecurity. 

This course aims to introduce students to the sociological study of social inequalities. That is, to gain a broad understanding of the social processes through which some end up having more resources than others and through which some become included and some excluded. In the introductory sessions, we will begin by defining social inequality and its relevant dimensions, learning about its trends in Europe and the world as well as its pernicious effects for society. Students will also learn key sociological concepts such as social class, social mobility, and ethnoracial categorization processes. In the second part of the course students will be introduced to some of sociology’s most studied mechanisms that help explain the perpetuation of inequalities in a wide range of contexts such as cumulative advantage, opportunity hoarding, discrimination, boundary making, and social networks. As a next step we will learn about some of the most relevant engines of inequality such as families and schools, labor markets, tax systems, extreme weather events, and migration systems. We will end the course by learning about how to tackle inequality. We will discuss how acceptance or opposition to it comes about and reflect on sociology’s relevance in addressing societal disparities.

Around the globe, right-wing populist and extremist movements and parties are on the rise. In some democracies, they have marginalized or even replaced mainstream conservative parties, in others – like in the US – they have radicalized them. In light of their typically ultranationalist (“America first”) and frequently isolationist and protectionist policy positions, it is somewhat counterintuitive that these actors would form cross-border alliances. And yet, the transnational networking of radicalized conservatives, right-wing populists and even extremists has increased in recent years. Gatherings such as the US-based Conservative Political Action Conferences (CPAC) have featured more and more international participants and high-level speakers. Common themes such as the “anti-woke agenda” can be observed across many different countries. In the seminar, we will explore the extent and relevance of these transnational networks, focusing on ideological exchanges and cross-border learning of strategies and tactics, including political communication.

This course examines the evolution of global internet governance. It focuses on the changing role of key actors and conflicts between them – the conflict between private or public oversight, the rise of multistakeholderism, and the attempts of democratic as well as authoritarian states to increase their regulatory grip. It also focuses on key issues of global internet governance such as privacy protection, content control, or cyber security. The course starts from the assumption that despite its dynamics, internet governance is politics like any other and can be understood with standard social science tools, particularly with concepts from international relations and political science.

This course focuses on the rise of dictators between 1915-1945: Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler and the demise of old liberal governments during the interwar period in Europe. Topics include historical analysis of these events and the rise of Bolshevism and of various Fascist regimes. 

This course is a very practical introduction to quantitative analysis in International Relations. Students learn the elements of causal inference methods, computational skills for R statistical software, and examples in International Relations (ex. conflict studies, among others).