Sociology

This course examines the ecological and social crises we are currently experiencing as a result of the pandemic and climate change.

This course introduces students to the concept of community health and primary health care as it is delivered in Ghana.  The course provides students an opportunities to learn about diseases of public health importance and selected endemic diseases specific to Ghana as well as their epidemiology and control in Ghana.  The course looks at the emerging non-communicable diseases in Ghana such as HIV/AIDS, hypertension, and breast and cervical cancers.  Students have first-hand learning opportunities on the psychosocial and social aspects of living with HIV, class discussions, and assigned readings with presentations. Students examine the importance of sexual reproductive health with a special emphasis on the needs of adolescents. Students learn the causes, symptoms, and treatment of hypertension and examine sanitation and food security as keys to community health.  

The course provides a basis and preconditions to constructively and critically reflect on the interplay between global health, the Convention of the Rights of the Child, and different international and national norm-supporting structures. The course
offers basic knowledge of the contents of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and global health, and also discusses the interplay between the Convention on the Rights of the Child and global health. The course discusses the importance of the Convention for the development of children's rights and living conditions, policies, strategies, and laws.
 

This course takes up gender as the primary object of study and category of analysis. It aims to understand the conceptualization of sex and gender by various scholars and the implications of their theorization; understand the process of becoming a woman/man via the social construction of masculinity, femininity, sexuality, and the body; the implications of being a woman/man on our lived experience, and the mechanisms that reproduce, maintain, challenge, and change the observed gaps between the two sexes in daily lives or various institutions, e.g. family, education, and labor markets etc. Assessment: essay, group project, presentation, attendance.

This is a graduate level course that is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course gives students a general overview and understanding of the international and European criminological debate concerning border control and a detailed knowledge of key topics and key scholars in the field. Students are expected to be able to combine their knowledge of different contexts and disciplinary approaches when analyzing border policies. Students acquire the competencies and knowledge necessary to analyze critically the contemporary policies of border control in different contexts, also in view of possible fields of work and research: border police, the role and functioning of administrative detention and deportation, the international relations of the externalization of borders, the use of criminal law in border control. 

The course presents the contemporary debate in the field known as "border criminology". At the end of the course, students are expected to be able to analyze the mechanisms of power subtending the processes of illegalization, detention, deportation, refusal, and criminalization of migrants. The perspective developed in the course embraces a critical approach and considers law, policies, and discourses as entrenched factors in driving the mechanisms of border control. The focus of the analysis is the European context, analyzed through comparative perspective as much as possible. Special attention is given to the intersection of race, class, and gender in the law-making and law-enforcement activities. Not only is the securitization of border taken into account, but also the more recently emerged “humanitarian control” is considered as an object of possible criminological enquiry.

Lectures first introduce the students to the critical perspective in criminology and to the main topics of the theoretical debate of border criminology. It then provides an introduction to the theoretical key concepts in border criminology, and especially the question of punishment, the nature of borders, and the transnational perspective we aim to adopt in the course, with an attention to the possibility of transforming borders from below. Then, the lectures investigate the different countries in Europe where one can observe the mechanisms of border control, highlighting the variety of cases. Each of them is discussed through empirical and theoretical researches carried out in different contexts.