International Studies

This course introduces the nuances of gender in relation to the international human rights law framework. This interdisciplinary course provides an understanding of international human rights law; exposure to the main human rights conventions and their gendered objectives; and the manner in which gender is of relevance from a human rights perspective. Further, students develop critical thinking and analysis skills whilst comparing different instruments of international human rights law.

Our increasingly globalized world presents us with advantages and disadvantages, with both opportunities and challenges, and therefore also with paradoxes. The annually updated, UN-sponsored Millennium Project identifies 15 challenges our world faces: climate change; insufficient clean water; population growth; authoritarian regimes; lack of global foresight; sharing the benefits and reducing the threats of new information and communications technologies; the widening gap between rich and poor; new and reemerging diseases; educational deficiencies; ethnic conflicts, terrorism, and the threat of weapons of mass destruction; the unequal status of women; transnational crime networks; growing energy demands; the need for accelerated scientific and technological breakthroughs; and incorporating ethics into global decisions. This course navigate all these challenges through the lenses of geography, politics, and trade. This course only introduces theoretical perspectives on how these challenges can be analyzed and addressed, but also contextualize them in real-world cases. The ultimate goal is to make students able to think independently and formulate their own views on critical world affairs.

This course analyzes international society and globalization including structure and main features, the subjects and actors, and the regimes of cooperation developed such as for human rights, the environment, international security, and international economics.

This course integrates a gender perspective in the studies of societies and politics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It deploys an interdisciplinary approach and provides a gendered understanding of key issues and concepts such as nation and citizenship, family/kinship, social movements and civil society, violence and conflict. The course is based on two methods: (1) a theoretical framework setting the basis for gender studies in the MENA region; (2) an analysis of case studies and topical issues in order to understand the place of women and gender in the transformations of societies and political regimes in the MENA region.

This course focuses on current history from the last third of the 20th century to the present. Topics include: politics and international relations; the economy; culture; international conflicts in a global world; technological and scientific globalization; global society and risk; global civil society.