Lehre

Current Courses

Prof. Dr. Jens Newig

Introduction to Environmental and Sustainability Governance

This lecture offers a comprehensive and advanced introduction to environmental and sustainability governance. It aims to provide a thorough understanding of key concepts and theoretical approaches in this field and their application to real-world cases. The lecture explores the functioning of governance systems in the development and implementation of public policies that address pressing environmental and sustainability issues at local, national, and international levels. The lecture focuses on both the structural and procedural aspects of governance.

The topics covered in this lecture may include: Governance of the commons; Public and stakeholder participation; Collaborative governance; Evidence-informed governance; Adaptive governance and governance learning; Multi-level and transboundary governance; Private actor and network governance; Risk governance; Policy coherence and policy-mixes; International regimes (e.g., climate, biodiversity); Governance of global value chains; Governing sustainability transitions; Policy and institutional change.

Ziel: Students will gain a comprehensive understanding of the various dimensions of environmental and sustainability governance and will develop critical thinking and analytical skills necessary to address the complex challenges associated with governing towards environmental sustainability.

Dr. Michael Rose

Research Seminar in Democracy Studies

This class requires regular attendance in-person due to the format of the assignments. Online participation or non-regular attendance is not possible.

In this course, students conduct a research project the field of democracy studies (building on the theories and concepts learned in the Module "Institutions of Democracy"). After some input sessions about research designs with a particular focus on democracy research, students identify a relevant research question which they will try to answer in the research project. The research project includes the elaboration and concretization of the research question and the theoretical framework, the elaboration of a research design, the collection of data, their processing, as well as the actual data analysis. The lecturer provides input sessions on comparative methods and accompanies the students' individual research projects. In addition, the participants give each other feedback on their research projects. The students present the project idea at the beginning and their empirical results at the end of the semester. Eventually, they report on their research project in form of a research paper.

Ziel: The students conduct their own research project in the field of democracy studies in which they formulate a theoretical argument for an empirical puzzle in democracy studies, develop a suitable research design, collect data, and test their theoretical argument empirically.