Sociology

This course draws on contemporary moral philosophy to shed light on some of the most pressing practical, ethical questions of our time, including euthanasia, abortion, surrogacy, censorship, animal rights, genetic testing and cloning and environmental ethics. 

Educational inequalities are often explained through individual factors such as talent, effort, or motivation. This course shows instead that achievement is socially patterned and rooted in unequal resources, expectations, and institutional structures. It reviews major sociological approaches—cultural reproduction, rational-choice models, tracking and maintained inequality, and out-of-school effects. Sessions combine theory with hands-on analyses of a simplified PISA dataset in Jamovi. Students learn to read research articles, build hypotheses, and conduct basic descriptive and multivariate analyses to understand how social background shapes school outcomes.

This course examines contemporary trends in socio-economic inequalities across Western countries and explores their political implications. It analyzes inequalities in social mobility, income, and wealth; poverty and labor market integration, urban segregation, as well as health inequalities. Particular attention is given to the mediating role of educational systems, labor market institutions, and welfare states. The course contrasts institutionalist approaches to inequality with structural explanations that emphasize the impact of globalization and technological change. Finally, it discusses how these empirical patterns relate to evolving political attitudes and preferences, including the decline of traditional class voting and the rise of populist parties.

This courses explores the causes and consequences of corruption and the ways to combat it. Corruption is a complex problem, requiring an approach from several disciplines. This course relates corruption to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) while describing the anti-corruption mechanisms and participants in Mexico. 

This course presents a sociological perspective on environmental knowledge, issues, campaigns, and risks. The course explores what “the environment” is, how environmental quality is measured and understood, and how we perceive of environmental risks and problems. Students examine a number of case studies and examples, including energy, food, climate change, and others. Key questions explored through the course include: how are issues framed; who is responsible for mitigating a risk, cleaning up after a disaster, or saving the planet; how is blame apportioned; what is the epistemological basis for knowledge claims about the environment; and how do we know what we know about environmental problems and risks?

This course explores the formation of cultural identities and the challenges they face in the age of globalization through case studies from European, Latin American, and East Asian contexts.

The course tackles a highly topical issue - nationalism and its relationship to gender - enabling students to critically engage with current public debates on the global surge of right-wing populist forces and, more specifically, with recent gendered developments in anti-immigration politics in European societies. The course engages with feminist theories of nationalism, which have conceptualized the ways in which women are mobilized by nationalist movements as well as the relationship between feminisms and nationalisms across different contexts including Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

This introductory course reviews the current problems of violence and exploitation under the perspective and works of the foremost classical and contemporary thinkers. The course requires the development of intellectual curiosity and critical thinking that underpins the reflection of the different concepts, theories and proposals of the authors. As a learning outcome, the class will be able to identify expressions of violence, vulnerability and exploitation present in their daily reality while addressing possible alternatives of conflict resolution, recognition and solidarity that promote different forms of relationships between human beings.

This course sits at the forefront of cultural criminology and legal humanities, offering students a deep exploration of the relationship between culture and criminal justice. It engages students in critical discussions on how culture shapes, and is shaped by, law covering topics such as art theft, cultural looting, AI and technology, performance in trials, and the role of technology in legal processes. The first half of the class examines criminal justice through the lens of art and culture, exploring literature, theatre, and art that engage with justice themes, and developing analytical skills through performance analysis and creative writing. The second half reverses the perspective, analyzing art through a criminal justice lens by considering issues such as censorship, policing culture, and the legal frameworks that regulate art and cultural expression. The class fosters cross-disciplinary thinking and equips students with new methods of critical analysis for criminology, law, and justice studies.