Current courses

This course offers an introduction to the policy process and core concepts of policy analysis, with an application to climate policy. Policy responses are being crafted at multiple levels of governance, while cutting across a wide range of traditional policy fields and being relatively new. What is agenda-setting and how has the climate change problem moved from fringe to center stage of policy agendas over the past decades?

This course is for 1st year MPP and MDS students only.

Energy economics is an introduction to the technology and economics of energy systems, power markets, and electricity networks. The economics of wind and solar energy, the cornerstones of low-carbon energy systems, lie at the heart of this course.

The global energy system is undergoing the deepest transformation of its history, driven by decarbonisation, decentralisation and digitalisation: New technologies from solar photovoltaics to batteries and the Internet of things reshape how electricity is produced, transported, traded and consumed. Wind and solar energy are at the center of change. Understanding this revolution requires understanding the deep links between electricity systems and technologies, economics and markets, and regulation and policy. For the future of the global energy system, and hence the future of our climate system, understanding the technology and economics of wind and solar energy is maybe the single most crucial piece of knowledge.

This course is for 2nd year MIA, MPP and MDS students only.

This is an advanced course on electricity markets, covering forward, spot, balancing and retail markets as well as policy interventions into those markets. Students will learn how to design and how to trade on such markets.

Electricity markets and the prices that emerge from trading on these markets drive the energy transition. It is traders, rather than power plant engineers, who decide which power station is dispatched. It is the prices that provide the incentives for investment and innovation and driving out (or not) polluting generators. It is the market that will ultimately determine if new energy technologies thrive or dive. But robust electricity market design is not only foundational for the energy transition, it is also foundational for energy poverty and for security of supply: In other industries, perverse incentives cause waste of resources, in electricity markets they can cause large-scale blackouts. Electricity market design is complicated, but too important to be left poorly understood.

This course is for 2nd year MIA, MPP and MDS students only.

Advanced climate policy provides a comprehensive overview and opportunity to engage with important details of the emerging field of climate policy. The European Union’s Green Deal and Germany serve as main case studies. 

This course is offered as an elective for MIA and MPP students. 

The questions of how and what we eat has become a key topic for public debate. The issue of food manifests itself in different forms that are often vehicles for new understandings of the self, the nation, the environment and/ or the planet; just take the rise of consumer and farmer movements that oppose modern industrialised food production and worry about the future of agricultural sustainability or the growing focus on food and cuisine in the media and other culture industries.

Drawing on a number of disciplines, this course places food production, distribution and consumption at the centre of scrutiny. Like many other areas of life, it takes the world of food to be a world of politics and power—a world in which policy-makers, economists, environmentalists, agribusinesses, scientists, consumers, and social justice groups, all holding vastly different views, seek to influence the food system and related policies. Hence, the world of food and the way our food systems work and worked offers important insights into the interplay of power, politics and identity—including relations between developing and developed countries, between genders as well as people and the natural world.

It is through the lense of food that this course will hence explore some of the major global challenges of our time, like: food, self and identity; food and cultural heritage; food and migration; food and the nation; food, the media and popular culture; the political economy of human-environment relations; food and the consumer society; food poverty and the politics of food waste; state policy and the healthy body politic; food and the 'moral economy'; the future of food production and consumption.

This course is for 2nd year MIA, MPP and MDS students only.

This course introduces students to concepts and issues in the study of global environmental politics (GEP) placing some emphasis on the political economy of environmental protection. The course begins by outlining perspectives on why (global) environmental problems arise, and how and under what conditions they can be solved. It then explores processes of international environmental governance: problem identification/policy formulation, designing and negotiating multilateral environmental regimes and implementing and enforcing international environmental law and policy. Illustrations from the politics of climate change, ozone depletion, air pollution, whaling, hazardous wastes, mercury politics, deforestation and biodiversity will be used to further the understanding of these processes. We will ask questions such as: What factors help countries negotiate treaties to solve problems? What types of rules work best? What role do non-state actors play? How can we evaluate whether a treaty has been effective or successful? What are the obstacles to effective environmental agreements?

We then turn to recent issues and debates in global environmental politics by analysing examples of non-state global environmental governance, assessing the contentious link between international trade and environmental degradation, exploring the interrelationship between economic development and environmental quality and examining the link between environmental change, violent conflict and human security.

This course is for 2nd year MIA, MPP and MDS students only.

This course offers an in-depth examination of  the relationship between the climate crisis and human rights. The course will cover why and how the climate crisis is a prominent human rights issue globally and will offer tools to critically evaluate the mutual supportiveness and possible tensions between human rights and climate action.

The course has two parts: Part I explores the theoretical and historical discussions on the interrelationship between climate change and human rights (law). It includes a brief overview of the history of the development of human rights norms and institutions, the science and politics of climate change, the different interpretations of what climate justice entails, the differentiated impacts of the climate crisis on human rights, the impacts of climate response measures on human rights, and the interface between the just transition to a low carbon society and human rights.

Part II focuses on how institutions and actors engage with human rights and climate crisis interface. It includes the evolution of the inclusion of human rights in the international climate regime as well as the inclusion of climate change in the international human rights regime, climate litigation and human rights, social and legal mobilisation for climate action through human rights, corporate climate accountability and human rights, and the situation of environmental defenders.

This course is for 2nd year MIA, MPP and MDS students only.

This class provides students with a deep insight into how various multilateral institutions, plurilateral fora, as well as (financing) instruments around climate change operate. This includes of course how UNFCCC/COPs function, but also for example creation and implementation of Just Energy Transition Partnerships; how key concepts and current topics are evolving and being negotiated like around loss and damage; how the challenges of raising public and in particular private sector finance are discussed in a number of climate funds like the Green Climate Fund.

This course is for 2nd year MIA, MPP and MDS students only.

This course provides an introduction to the basic elements of global development policy with a focus on the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. These goals are of particular relevance for Africa as the continent still ranks amongst the most under-developed regions of the world. Therefore, the course will focus on the African Union which represents 55 members of the African continent. Students will learn about the policies, tools and aspirations of the AU to reach the SDG's until 2030. In a critical assessment of the progress achieved until today, the course will also deal with some of the biggest challenges, such as internal and external security and good governance in key member countries of the African Union. Course related oral presentations and debates will enhance the students learning experience. 

This course is for 2nd year MIA, MPP and MDS students only.