Courses in 2019
Cognitive Phenomenology
The course is designed to familiarize participants with the increasingly influential, though still controversial thesis that thinking is a kind of experience, and that conceptual mental content is constituted by a proprietary, sui generis kind of non-sensory phenomenology. In addition to the familiar sensory kinds of experience – visual, auditory, olfactory, etc., there is, according to this view, a cognitive kind of phenomenology. Just as there is “something it’s like” to have visual, auditory, etc.
Conceptualizing, Navigating, and Representing the Field in Migration Studies
The aim of this summer school is to examine the field of migration studies with a focus on three key aspects: (1) reflecting on “migration studies” as a discipline and critically examining the assumptions that underlie the production of knowledge about migrants and migration; (2) reflecting on the process of migration research fieldwork and of conducting work “in the field” with migrants and other related actors; (3) critically engaging with the way the field of migration research is represented and exploring possible alternative ways of speaking about and representing migration research.
Constitution-building in Africa
History has seen several waves of constitution-building in the 20th century with an unparalleled boom starting in the 1990s after the fall of the Berlin wall. And while experts recently announced the end of this boom in new constitutions after the Cold War, the world is witnessing another wave of constitution-building, this time predominately in Africa.
Cultures of Dissent in Eastern Europe (1945-1989): Research Approaches in the Digital Humanities
This 7-day seminar in digital humanities research methods is designed to expose a new generation of scholars in Cold War history and culture to methods of analysis and discovery involving computational techniques. Designed and run by NEP4DISSENT (New Exploratory Phase in Research on East European Cultures of Dissent, nep4dissent.eu), COST Action 16213, the inspiration for the course is built around the transfer of knowledge from technologists and data scientists to humanists.
Fields of Vision: Memory, Identity, and Images of the Past
This summer university program at Central European University (Budapest) brings together outstanding international faculty and focuses on the construction of memory and identity narratives through images. The study of images generated, circulated, and stored on a variety of media, and their social embeddedness take many forms. Our course enhances participants’ skills for decoding the changing mechanisms of meaning-making and new practices of image production, interpretation, and social use.
Geospatial Technologies and Remote Sensing for Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals
With the recent adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the call by UN Secretary General for a “revolution” in the use of data for sustainable development, geospatial technologies have tremendous potential to effectively and efficiently monitor SDG progress. In the fifteen years since the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the amount of data available, as well as data collection and processing methods have changed substantially.
Global Entrepreneurship and Startup Camp
Do you want to transform your business idea into innovation? Are you considering your own venture? The CEU iLab Bootcamp (Global Entrepreneurship and Startup Camp) is a structured blend of practical teaching sessions, experiential learning tools, case studies, situation games, team assignments, clinics and one-on-one mentor sessions.
Inclusive Early Childhood Development and Education: Evidence, activism and converging constituencies – focus on refugees and migrants
According to the UNHCR, approximately 67 million people are currently displaced around the world as a result of the unprecedented levels of armed conflict. Similarly, millions of people are migrating in search of better economic opportunities with about 258 million people now living in a country which is not the country of their birth. Refugee and migrant children are often excluded from early childhood settings and schools alongside others who are also excluded on the grounds of disability, race, language, religion, gender, and poverty.
Innovations in Disaster Risk Reduction
The Innovations in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) workshop will highlight recent advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) and how they are empowering both decision-makers and citizens to play a proactive role in managing disaster risks and providing more effective disaster response. The workshop will build upon experience and expertise in ICTs and DRR by both UNDP and a diverse network of organizations, who have come together over the past several years to train environmental professionals in the field.
Internationalization of the University at Home: Challenges and Opportunities
The course is designed to familiarize the participants with several introductory topics in higher education and to show them how to think critically about these topics. The success of the course depends on its participants being familiar with basic techniques of argumentation; to this end, one third of the course is conceived as a crash course in critical thinking, and it will focus on the following: 1) what arguments are and how to identify them; 2) types of arguments; 3) types of reasoning errors.
Learning Can Be Fun: Examining the World of Education with Critical Eyes
Journalism is facing a deep crisis of public trust. Some say it is more serious than the financial crisis that has clobbered news media over the course of the past decade. But the two, in fact, are deeply connected: subscriptions or various forms of memberships seem to be the only business model that works in this new era of journalism, and there is a close link between people’s decision to pay for news and the level of trust they have in the news product they buy and the people who make it.
Measuring and Building Audience Trust
Journalism is facing a deep crisis of public trust. Some say it is more serious than the financial crisis that has clobbered news media over the course of the past decade. But the two, in fact, are deeply connected: subscriptions or various forms of memberships seem to be the only business model that works in this new era of journalism, and there is a close link between people’s decision to pay for news and the level of trust they have in the news product they buy and the people who make it.
Mediation Theory and Skills
This intensive one-week course facilitates the exchange of ideas and cooperative projects among mediation scholars, practitioners, trainers, and students in the East and West. In addition to offering an introduction to mediation, the program provides a teaching and training template for mediation training for scholars and practitioners from around the world to adapt for use in their home countries.
Music as Heritage: from Tradition to Product
There is a long tradition of cooperation between ethnography and musicology in Central and Eastern Europe, which has been challenged by modern trans-disciplinary approaches of ethnomusicology. Combined with the extensive experience of CEU’s Cultural Heritage Studies and CEU’s Arts and Culture Center, this course provides an insight into the intangible heritage scene and its most universally accessible fields: music.
Political Psychology: Ideology and Partisanship
Political Psychology is a discipline that experienced significant growth in the Anglo-American academic world in recent years. However, it has only started to flourish in Central and Eastern Europe nowadays. Its research is dedicated to understanding how we, humans, perceive and react to the world around us, especially on our interactions with political systems.
Romani Identities and Antigypsyism
The Summer School will focus on the nexus between Romani identities and antigypsyism. Antigypsyism is a core concept of critical Romani studies, and can be used methodologically, analytically and theoretically as a way of understanding the position of Roma in Europe historically and in the present moment. A growing body of scholarship grounds our understanding of antigypsyism in the Europeanization of the Roma issue and neoliberal regime expansion following the fall of communism.
Sustainability Transitions and the Precautionary Principle
The precautionary principle is a key principle of environment governance. It poses challenges to both environmental science and environmental governance because it applies to 'situations of scientific complexity, uncertainty and ignorance, where there may be a need to act in order to avoid, or reduce, potentially serious or irreversible threats to health and/or the environment, using an appropriate strength of scientific evidence, and taking into account the pros and cons of action and inaction and their distribution' (EEA 2013, p. 681).
The Morality of Discrimination
Recent philosophical discussions about discrimination have focused on what makes discrimination wrongful in paradigmatic cases, such as in examples involving sexist hiring committees or racist university admissions procedures. The purpose of this course is to provide a forum within which to build upon these foundations by exploring the further complications that arise in more controversial cases of the kind that we encounter most commonly.