Study Abroad | Maynooth
Spring 2027: Academics

Course Code: AC 207

Instruction Language: English

This module builds on students existing knowledge of accounting principles to develop an ability to apply generally accepted accounting practices, international accounting standards and relevant legislation to the preparation of financial statements.

Course Code: AN 241

Instruction Language: English

This module tries to familiarise students with critical anthropological perspectives on sustainability. This will involve understanding the environmental dimensions of the simultaneous historical emergence of mass poverty and mass prosperity in distinct world regions, and critically evaluating the sustainable development efforts used to address the former, using a core ethnography and shorter key texts. The module begins by considering the environmental antecedents and implications of the long historical process of the making of the contemporary Global South and goes on to probe the exacerbation of both global inequality and ecological crisis in the era of globalization. Excerpts from landmark texts by Mike Davis, Peter Worsley and Amita Baviskar are among the readings assigned for the first segment of this module. The second segment is based on a close textual reading of an important recent ethnography on the subject of struggles over natural resources, Nikhil Anand’s ‘The Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai’. This module is a standalone module offered in the Anthropology Department; it is also the second half of the elective stream ‘Prioritising People and Planet’, which is a teaching collaboration between the International Development and the Anthropology departments.

Course Code: PD 201

Instruction Language: English

An overview of design history and culture from the turn of the 20th century to date. Gives students an introduction and deep understanding of the design of manmade artefacts and how this influences future design. It will show design as an evolving and cyclical concept. Topics include: the Industrial Revolution and arts and crafts movement in design and society; stylistic and decorative movements of Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Modernism and Bauhaus, Post Modernism in design; the changing face of design in consumer society, design in popular and youth culture, and forecasting design for the future.

Course Code: BI 418

Instruction Language: English

Topics covered include: generating genetically modified animals; studying gene functions; isolating leukocyte subsets; flow cytometry; confocal microscopy; DNA transcription; techniques for assessing mRNA expression levels, transcription factor activation and promoter regulation; assessing protein-protein interactions; assessing novel protein functionality.

Course Code: BI 315

Instruction Language: English

Topics covered include: databases, database searching, multiple sequence alignment, next-generation genome sequencing, gene finding, comparative genomics and phylogeny reconstruction.

Course Code: BI102

Instruction Language: English

Major topics covered include: (i) Introduction to animal evolution, anatomy and physiology; (ii) Introduction to plant diversity, anatomy and physiology and (iii) Introduction to ecology. The animal section focuses on the evolutionary origins, adaptive characteristics and diversity of animals, and gives an introduction to the physiological functions necessary for life. The second part of the course focuses on plants and introduces plant diversity with an emphasis on the diversity and anatomy of flowering plants. Also discussed are plant responses to internal and external stimuli, including plant hormones, and the transport of water and nutrients. The Ecology section reviews succession and climaxes, mineral cycles and energy in ecosystems.

Course Code: BI 204

Instruction Language: English

Topics covered include: origin of life; origin of eukaryotes; origin of photosynthesis; origin of animals; the colonization of land; origin of amniotes (including mammals, birds, and reptiles); species concepts and modes of speciation; macroevolutionary patterns and key evolutionary transitions; evolutionary trends and emerging phylogenetic relationships in animals and plants; population genetics: the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium; evolutionary forces in natural populations – mutation, migration, natural selection and genetic drift.

Course Code: BI436

Instruction Language: English

Fungal pathogens are a major cause of superficial and systemic disease in immunocompromised (e.g. HIV+ patients) and immunodeficient (e.g. transplant recipients) patients and may contribute to over 4% of hospital-based deaths. The diagnosis and treatment of fungal infections can be difficult and there is a limited range of effective anti-fungal agents currently in use. This module will examine the molecular and cellular mechanisms employed by fungal pathogens to colonise and disseminate within the host, and to evade the immune response. Specific sections will examine the biology of the yeast Candida albicans and its ability to colonise mucosal surfaces. The role of toxins in the pathogenesis of Aspergillus fumigatus, a pulmonary pathogen, will be discussed. The emergence of ‘new’ fungal pathogens will be studied and the factors that have lead to their emergence will be characterized. Other areas to be studied include means of diagnosing fungal infections, treatment options, mode of action of antifungal agents, and the immune response to fungal infection.

Course Code: MN 312

Instruction Language: English

Addresses the core functions and process of global supply chain management. This module aims to ensure students understand the role of supply chain management function within an organization and the global impact supply chain management has on all aspects of the business.

Course Code: CS 211

Instruction Language: English

Fundamentals and implementation of Binary Search Trees; Balancing Binary Search Trees; Tree traversals (depth and breadth-first); Graph representations; Hash Tables; Algorithm analysis: upper and average complexity bounds, best, average and worst case algorithm behaviour; Algorithm strategies: brute force, greedy, divide and conquer and backtracking algorithms. Selected advanced topics in Algorithms and Data Structures.

Course Code: CS 426

Instruction Language: English

Topics may include: Theory: Primitives, 2D&3D, Image Formats, Colour, Lighting and Shading, Homogeneous co-ordinates, Quaternions, Camera models, Transformations, Rendering, Animation; Hardware: Graphics Cards, Data formats, display technologies, MoCap; Software: OpenGL, Blender and Unity.

Course Code: CS 261

Instruction Language: English

This module will focus on multimedia technologies for the generation, analysis, and production of multimedia content. The module will first introduce multimedia and its convergence within the media of television, the internet and mobile communications. The module will provide a thorough study of software processes for the generation of multimedia content. Topics will include: introduction to multimedia and multimedia systems and standards; multimedia representation and processing; multimedia storage and compression; software, user interfaces and authoring tools.

Course Code: SO 318A

Instruction Language: English

Goals, design and functions of operating systems, representing operating system abstractions. Processor and disk scheduling theory and algorithms, alternative processing environments and architectures, efficient resource management strategies. Memory management, virtual architecture and management algorithm efficiency. Basic file system design, space management options, mapping and interface. Protection and security theory. Design approaches for interprocess communication and practical coding of alternative mechanisms. Concurrency control and the mutual exclusion problem, deadlock, generic concurrency problems and coded strategies and solutions. The lab work is Unix based and involves accessing operating system functions from a command shell and within programs, using various interprocess communication mechanisms and implementing solutions to concurrent programming problems.

Course Code: EC 327

Instruction Language: English

Introduces students to the economic issues involved in the organization and undertaking of sporting and sports-related activities. Topics that may be analyzed include: demand for sport; pricing of sports events; Pareto efficiency; organization of clubs and leagues; competitive balance; labor markets in sport; broadcasting of sport; public finance and sport; cheating in sport; gambling and sport.

Course Code: MD 216

Instruction Language: English

Examines key historical developments and theoretical articulations of documentary as a form encompassing the first films through wartime propaganda, ethnographic film, city-symphonies, cinéma vérité/direct cinema and both more recent feature documentaries and a wide array of non-fiction television genres.

Course Code: FN 314

Instruction Language: English

This course examines forwards, futures and swaps; their economic role in capital markets, the equilibrium pricing of these securities, and uses of these securities in hedging and speculative trading. Topics covered include the economic role of derivative securities, the mechanics of futures and swap markets trading, non-arbitrage pricing of forwards and futures, commodity vs. equity-index vs. foreign exchange futures, the term structure of interest rates and its relationship to swap rates, and hedging and speculative strategies using forwards, futures and swaps.

Course Code: HY 3005

Instruction Language: English

This module will explore the history of Africans and African communities in Britain and Ireland from the sixteenth century to the second half of the twentieth century. It will combine contextual discussion with a case study approach, exploring and contextualising the lives of individual Africans or people of African ancestry. In so doing it will highlight the ways in which ‘big’ historical processes and dynamics – slavery, empire, migration and decolonization – are experienced at the level of individual lives.

Course Code: HY 270

Instruction Language: English

This module provides a social, economic and political exploration of Northern Ireland during the Troubles and offers a detailed examination of the outbreak and escalation of conflict.

Course Code: LW 322

Instruction Language: English

The module addresses the position of children in Irish law, with a particular emphasis on children in the context of family law. It addresses, in particular, current legal developments in the area of reproduction and assisted human reproduction (as well as surrogacy). The module examines the position of the child under the Constitution of Ireland 1937, the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It interrogates the law as it relates to the care and upbringing of children, with particular emphasis on the concepts of adoption, guardianship, custody and access, and the provision of financial support for children. The module also examines legal responses to children and other family members identified as being at risk, with a particular focus on the Child Care Act 1991, as amended, and the responsibilities of the Child and Family Agency, as well as child abduction, and domestic violence. The module seeks throughout to highlight the increasingly international dimensions of child law, with particular emphasis on cross-border recognition of court orders, and the free movement of families. It also emphasises the importance, where appropriate and feasible, of seeking to resolve disputes by conciliation, mediation and collaborative practices, though being mindful throughout of the imperative of ensuring that the best interests of the child are always secured.

Course Code: EN 303

Instruction Language: English

This module examines how literary forms change rapidly and radically through experimentation and asks why this happens. It introduces students to the ways in which literary forms (in drama, fiction, prose, or poetry) undergo sudden alterations, explores the reasons behind such changes, and asks students to consider the aesthetic, political, historical and literary impact of such moments of formal experimentation. The module will discuss case studies in experimentation, concentrating on the formal and textual nature of that experimentation, while setting texts in their historical moments. Case studies might include texts which exemplify: the rise of the novel; Romantic poetry; magic realism; modernism; postmodernism.

Course Code: PO 305

Instruction Language: English

This module introduces students to the main policy areas and contentious issues which shape and define the politics of European Integration in the contemporary era. The European Union is a unique actor in international politics and constitutes the key reference point for public policy in its member states. The modules introduces and analyses the significance of key EU policy areas such as agriculture, competition and environment policy and how such policies are formulated and implemented. It also evaluates EU Enlargement and Neighbourhood policies and the priorities attached to the Lisbon Agenda and Horizon 2020. It examines the EU budgetary process and how it shapes regional and national politics. It assesses the development of European Monetary Union (EMU) and the challenges faced by the EU in the face of continuing turmoil within the Eurozone and the threats to its very survival. Students also engage with the key modalities of the policy-making process within the EU, how this system has evolved over time, and, in particular at changes which have been wrought by management of successive crises within the Euro-zone. This module will complement and logically follow on (sequentially) from our existing module on EU institutions (The Politics of the European Union, PO305) and provide students with a more nuanced and balanced sense of how the EU functions as a political system.

Course Code: PS 254

Instruction Language: English

This module explores fundamental issues involved in the assessment and measurement of individual differences, some of the main theories in the field, and key questions and debates in both personality and intelligence/ability. Introduction to psychometric testings including the principles of psychological test design, administration and interpretation. Theories of personality and intelligence/ability. Applications of individual differences theory and research. The measurement of human abilities and associated questions/debates. The role of genetic and environmental factors in personality and intelligence.

Course Code: SO 311

Instruction Language: English

Core features of the biological bases of learning; Classical Conditioning; Operant Conditioning; The Behavioural Analysis of Language and Cognition; The Cognitive Approach to learning; Cognitive maps and spatial learning. Module Objective: To consider cognitive and behaviour analytic approaches to learning.

Course Code: SO 214

Instruction Language: English

Introduces the ways in which contemporary Northern Irish society is organized, experienced and represented. The major social and political divisions within Northern Irish society are analyzed.

Course Code: SO 338

Instruction Language: English

To introduce social science perspectives on social movements and revolutions. May include: The variety of forms of social movements and revolutions; theories and explanations of movements and revolutions; the consequences of social movements and revolutions.