CIVICA ESR
COURSE CATALOGUE

The aim of this course is to provide students with the tools they need to use experimental human sciences, and more specifically behavioral sciences, in their research work and professional practice. Students will be given the keys to efficiently finding relevant articles from the behavioral science literature and critically analyzing research in this field. They will also get the fundamental knowledge to building their own experimental protocols, enabling them to enrich their thinking on the articulation between experimental methods and other methods in the human sciences. The course will be structured to leave as much room as possible for personal reflection. These weekly 2-hour sessions will combine theoretical and practical presentations, and group discussion. To enable participants to mobilize the knowledge acquired during this seminar as quickly and easily as possible, the content of the sessions will be organized around their research themes (dissertation or thesis topic). The course will be taught in French and English. Dates: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 13 January, from 10 to 12
Teachers:

• Lou SAFRA (Sciences Po)

Entry requirements: None

Nomothetic accounts of politics have postulated a deductive framework to explain political outcomes, in principle applicable across space and over time. In this framework, self-interest is the driving force of human action, dictating decisions based on two ingredients, both exogenously given: preferences and institutions. Within this set-up, culture has been treated as a residual quantity, devoid of any any analytical power. The purpose of this course is to unpack and scrutinize this residual, bringing culture to the forefront of political analysis. The seminar offers an in-depth exploration of theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of political culture. Political culture, as a field of study, intersects various disciplines, including political science, economics, public policy, psychology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology. This course aims to define and understand culture using social science tools, addressing fundamental questions about its origins, transmission, and evolution.
Teachers:

• Elias Dinas (European University Institute)

This is a methodological course on set-theoretic methods for the social sciences. While the spectrum of a set-theoretic methods is broad, including techniques such as Mill’s methods or typological theory, this course primarily focuses on the crisp-set and fuzzy-set versions of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Invented by Charles Ragin [1987], this technique is still undergoing modifications, improvements, and ramifications. These methods are applied in fields as diverse as political science, public policy, international relations, sociology, business and management studies, or even musicology (see www.compasss.org). This course aims at enabling students to produce a publishable QCA of their own. In order to achieve this, this course provides both the formal set theoretical underpinnings of QCA and the technical and research practical skills necessary for performing a QCA. All applied parts of the course will be performed in the R software environment (CRAN), using RStudio. The course is structured as follows. We start with some basics of formal logic and set theory. Then we introduce the notions of sets and how they are calibrated. After this, we move on to the concepts of causal complexity and of necessity and sufficiency, show how the latter denote subset relations, and then learn how such subset relations can be analyzed with so-called truth tables. We learn how to logically minimize truth tables and what the options for the treatment of so-called logical remainders are. Once students master the current standard analysis practice, we discuss several extensions and possible improvements of QCA. Depending on the needs and interests of participants, we choose several topics from the following list: set-theoretic multi-method research, i.e. the combination of QCA with follow-up within-case analyses; the integration of time into QCA; theory-evaluation in set-theoretic methods; or QCAspecific procedures for robustness tests. Since this is an advanced PhD course, students who plan to attend should first check for themselves and, in case of doubt, with me whether they fulfill the following requirements: Participants should have (a) some practical experience in empirical comparative social research; (b) undergone some thorough courses in basic research methodology; and (c) preferably some basic statistical training, or at least hands-on knowledge with some sort of spreadsheet programs (even if it is just Excel). The core readings of the course are Schneider and Wagemann [2012] and Oana et al. [2021]. Students who wish to take the course and need more information as to what the course is about are invited to skim through the first chapters of these books. From the beginning, we will use specialized software for performing the analytic steps learned in class. We will use R [R Core Team, 2020] and RStudio [RStudio Team, 2020] and within it, the packages QCA [Dusa, 2018] and SetMethods [Oana and Schneider, 2018]. A desired (and very likely) side effect of this course will be that participants not only increase their proficiency in R, but also that we engage into discussions on more general methodological issues of good comparative research, such as principles and practices of case selection, concept formation, measurement validity, and forms of causal relations. The course begins on 7 January, and runs on Tuesday between 10:50 – 12:30.
Teachers:

• Carsten Q. Schneider (Central European University)

Entry requirements: Students should have some experience in doing empirical social research, be it via qualitative and/or quantitative methods. Some basic knowledge in formal formal logic and Boolean algebra is helpful but neither expected, nor required.

The course is a semester-long, foundational course for doctoral students preparing for their role as teaching assistants and future scholar-teachers. This course also forms the basis of the comprehensive certificate program for teaching in higher education offered by the Yehuda Elkana Center for Teaching, Learning, and Higher Education Research (The Elkana Center). The course fosters an understanding of the university teacher as a professional scholar ready to engage in teaching informed by research, models of good practice, a spirit of inquiry, and critical intellectual engagement. Our approach to teaching in higher education combines knowledge of theoretical foundations, a strong practice orientation, and an appreciation for collaborative, inquiry-driven, and technology-enhanced learning environments. This course will allow for the development of your own teaching approaches and values through a combination of reading, reflective writing, and practical tasks. You will gain a research-driven foundation for your work as twenty-first century scholar-teachers through the study of key issues and experimentation in a variety of approaches. First in a two-part sequence providing a systematic approach to teaching fundamentals, focusing on the design and delivery of lessons/sessions. https://elkana.ceu.edu/foundations-teaching-higher-education-yelc6101-and-yelc6103
Teachers:

• Tamara Kamatovic (Central European University)
• Mátyás Szabó (Central European University)

Different kinds of analog and digital data play important roles in contemporary societies and economies around the world. Global data governance is hence highly contextual and often characterized by the intricate interplay of law and infrastructure and shaped by a broad array of public and private actors. Recently, digital data has become a focal point of regulatory efforts in the European Union and around the world. This seminar explores conceptual questions of “data law” such as: How should we think about “data” and “information” from a legal perspective? How can private and public actors establish jurisdiction over data? Who owns data? What data should be “open”? What will future data sharing infrastructures and collective data governance arrangements look like? The seminar transcends the established (but likely unsustainable) divide between “personal” and “non-personal” data (such as weather, ocean, machine, or business data). It is hence not a course in data protection law as such. The idea is to center “data” as a regulatory object – in line with the EU’s dominant regulatory approach – and to critically evaluate the assumptions that underpin the EU’s regulatory agenda in comparison and contrast with the evolving regulatory landscape in the United States, China, India, and elsewhere. The seminar integrates insights from (critical) data studies and media and communication studies and discusses the potential for and challenges of conducting inter-disciplinary work in this domain. Data law questions and problems arise in many contexts – the seminar will be attuned to researchers’ own interests and projects (facilitated through short presentations). Attendance and active participation required. Assignments include response papers and a short presentation that links the seminar topic to the researchers’ own research agenda.
Teachers:

• Thomas Streinz (European University Institute)

Prefigurative politics are rooted in revolutionary thought, in particular anarchist thought. The idea is to organise the revolutionary movement in the image of the society it wants to establish. Prefiguration is closely related to the precept of congruence of means and ends. For example, if we want our post-evolutionary society to be non-violent then our revolution must be non-violent too. This seminar explores the implications of prefigurative politics for law. Can law be prefigurative? How does the idea of prefiguration relate to the notion of nonreformist reform which is currently popular in Law & Political Economy (LPE)? Does prefigurative politics risk ending up being quietist or privatising politics if we establish prefigurative communities and lifestyles? And what does prefiguration mean in the shadow of a still existing framework of (constitutional) law, where the state, private property, the police and prisons, and capital markets continue to be constituted and shaped by law? No specific prior knowledge is required for this seminar.
Teachers:

• Martijn Hesselink (European University Institute)

Do you believe stress is an inevitable part of doing a PhD? With multiple deadlines, performance pressure, escalating tuition fees, and an uncertain job market, it is no wonder that students are reportedly experiencing higher levels of stress and anxiety. This workshop will examine how sustained periods of stress actually impact the mind and body. We will also consider how specific thought patterns contribute to this and explore which tools you can incorporate into your daily routine to help reduce stress.
Entry requirements: N/A

No matter how much we accomplish in our careers, many of us have an inner critic that constantly questions our abilities and our worth. Ironically, the voice of the inner critic tends to get louder the more that we achieve. This workshop will teach you strategies for minimizing the volume of your inner critic and enable you to move towards greater self-confidence.

We explore the broad principles underlying academic writing – what makes academic writing distinctive, how to situate your argument within a broader literature, and how to structure a coherent argument. In this 90-minute session, the trainer will walk you through the five steps to writing a killer introduction and how to think about - and write - literature reviews.

4-hour workshop. Time: 9 am to 1 pm. This workshop examines how to foster engagement and participation in online teaching sessions. When teaching online, you are competing for the participants’ attention with potential distractions. Compared with classroom teaching, there are more situational factors out of your control. We will look at the aspects that you as a teacher need to consider in order to make the most of your online classes. After this workshop, you are better aware of the psychological/emotional side of online interaction, and how to make it support your teaching.
Teachers:

• Carol Kiriakos (European University Institute)

The law impacts technology. Technology impacts the law. Beyond these basic truths, the interaction between law and technology is all uncertain. Some voices pretend that the law limits innovation that stems from technological change. Others believe the exact contrary. The 2023 kerfuffle over the call to temporarily ban research on generative Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) systems best exemplify the issue. Perhaps, both views are true. But can they be true at the same time, and in relation to the same laws and technologies? In what circumstances does one view dominate the other? Do other regularities govern the relationship between law and technology? Can they be seen in patterns or trends? And do these deep structural relations hold true across areas of the legal system, and across technologies? This course’s core aim is to supply a framework to address these questions. Today, we do not have the beginning of a good answer to predict how law and technology work together. Our limited state of knowledge is unfortunate. Technology is key to human flourishing. And the law is a necessary institution of any human society. Neither of them is about to disappear anytime soon. Absent a systematic understanding of the ways in which law and technology interact, incomplete approaches proliferate in the legal literature. Some works regrouped under the umbrella term law and tech (“law & tech”) tend to approach the issue holistically. But that scholarship focuses predominantly on the legal problems raised by technology (Tranter, 2011). And law & tech’s methods are not entirely satisfactory, in particular, because they predominantly default to existing law’s traditional interests in line with the culture of precedent, and understandably decline on selecting new values which is what policy and lawmakers must do all the time. Outside of that field, the relationship between law & technology is treated on a siloed basis. For example, the emerging legal scholarship on AI pays only marginal interest to prior ethical discussions in relation to human cloning, DNA sequencing, or gene editing. The “compartmentalization” of legal research (Bernstein, 2007) is clearly a problem, given the largely “combinatorial” nature of technology (Arthur, 2011). Last, most of the law and technology scholarship focuses on digital, leaving other important technological fields like bio chemistry and others subject to substantial legal uncertainty. Overall, very few clear and actionable takeaways about the relations between law and technology emerge from the literature. This course represents an attempt to overcome this state of affairs. It is based on four key propositions: one, there are deep structural relations between law & technology; two, the deep structural relations between law and technology can be studied and described; three, a bargain between law’s demands for ethics, and technology’s demand for efficiency structures legal and technological outcomes, and many deep factors like technological literacy or the timing of policymaking affect the bargain; four, some general lessons can be derived from an empirical study of law and technology’s relations.
Teachers:

• Nicolas Petit (European University Institute)

Are you often distracted by your devices? Do you find yourself procrastinating by checking email or social media when you are meant to be working on your PhD? PhD students now face an unprecedented challenge. Pursuing a PhD requires boundless concentration, yet the exponential increase in device use has created an atmosphere of endemic distraction. During this session we will explore the consequences of digital dependency on PhD productivity and wellbeing more generally. Participants will reflect on how to better manage their time spent on devices and explore strategies for cultivating focus amid digital distraction.

Public speaking can be a daunting experience in general, but even more so in an academic setting. Whether it’s sharing your research findings, delivering job talks or teaching a class, doctoral students are frequently required to be in front of an audience. For those who suffer from presentation anxiety, the experience can be uncomfortable and even debilitating. This workshop will explore some of the common causes and symptoms of presentation anxiety. Students will come away from the workshop with a roadmap for delivering academic presentations with greater confidence.

We all know that we learn in different ways. But what are the consequences of this for our teaching? Do we really take this into consideration when planning our courses? Maybe we plan our courses according to our own preferences for learning? During this session, we will first look at different preferences for learning, including your own preferences. We will then apply this on your teaching, and you will have the opportunity to review this, and see how you perhaps could change it? Finally, you will learn about ideas that other participants have about how they could change their teaching. After this session you are expected to be able to: - Recognize the diversity of ways of learning. - Analyze your own teaching in relation to different preferences for learning. - Assess and adjust your own teaching to various contexts.
Teachers:

• Pär Mårtensson (Stockholm School of Economics)

Do you measure your PhD progress in relation to your peers? Do you find yourself constantly comparing yourself to others? In this workshop we will explore the instinct to compare ourselves to others within academia. Although the urge to compare may be understandable, the impact is rarely positive. Constant comparison not only harms our self-esteem, it also produces a skewed sense of our PhD progress. This session will consider the uniqueness of each PhD project and the futility of comparison. We will then explore ways to measure PhD progress beyond comparison.

Second in a two-part sequence providing a systematic approach to teaching fundamentals, focusing on course design and assessments. Participants must previously take Foundations or contact elkanacenter@ceu.edu for exemption. “Learning by Design” is a semester-long, intermediate-level course focused on how students learn and how instructors can facilitate student learning. Building on Foundations of Teaching in Higher Education (which is a prerequisite), it shifts the focus even more firmly from the teacher to the student. In their roles as designer, facilitator (and assessor) of learning, course participants explore how they can guide students in their learning and how to make that learning longer lasting and more significant. During our sessions we will unpack assumptions that surround student learning, delve into theories of how students learn, and explore corresponding principles and approaches to teaching that seek to align learning, teaching, and asessment. We will discuss how to better understand your students, recognize several implications of student diversity for student learning, and explore how to support different types of learners and different types of learning. We will explore, at some length, how to assess student learning, including assessment design, grading, and feedback. Throughout all of this, we will constantly reflect on our own growth as scholars in the process of becoming facilitators of learning.
Teachers:

• Tamara Kamatovic (Central European University)
• Mátyás Szabó (Central European University)

The cross-disciplinary field of “infrastructure studies” has recently captured the imagination of legal scholars interested in global and planetary ordering, technology regulation, securitization, and other topics. But what does it mean to “think infrastructurally”? This seminar discusses ways of engaging productively with insights from other disciplines that have studied infrastructures across space and time, in particular in the field of science and technology studies (STS): How do infrastructures differ from systems, networks, or platforms? How are infrastructures regulated – and how could they be regulated differently? Which infrastructures underpin regulation – and can infrastructure itself be understood as a form of regulation? Thinking infrastructurally can open-up pathways for analytical, critical, and normative inquiries from law and policy perspectives. The seminar will be attuned to researchers’ own interests and projects (facilitated through short presentations). Attendance and active participation required. Assignments include response papers and a short case study presentation of an infrastructure of relevance to the researchers’ own projects.
Teachers:

• Thomas Streinz (European University Institute)

Law and economics (L&E) is a scholarly approach that provides an economic perspective on legal institutions and the law. L&E utilizes formal and empirical economic analysis to understand the law. If the results of such economic analyses show that the explanatory power of economic theories is lacking, L&E also engages in the reconsideration of economic theories themselves. The course aims to introduce L&E as a methodological approach while being mindful of its normative assumptions and implications. It will first discuss the historical development and contemporary significance of L&E. The course will then explore several substantive policy areas: contract law, liability, antitrust, economic regulation, environmental law, behavioral law and economics, and technology. Guest lecturers will be invited to contribute to the course. Participants commit to the following: Prior reading of 2 to 4 scholarly papers or cases before each session. The papers will be discussed as the course progresses.
Teachers:

• Nicolas Petit (European University Institute)