Sample lectures in Liberal Arts and Sciences

Prospective students often ask what an AUC class is really like. With such a wide range of courses, there’s no single “typical” class: AUC students take lab courses, conduct fieldwork outside the classroom, work in teams, participate in immersive projects, give presentations, and study topics that cross the Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities. During the Experience Days, each major is represented by its own sample lecture. This way, you can experience the focus, teaching style and academic approach of the field you’re most interested in.

Who should attend?

The lectures are designed for secondary school students exploring study programme options for their Bachelor's degree and seeking a taste of an international, interdisciplinary learning environment. You don’t need any prior university-level knowledge to take part.

Choose your sample lecture

View the descriptions

Social Sciences

• Title: Emotion: Are Your “Happy” and My “Happy” the Same?
• Abstract: Emotions are complex constellations of experience that shape how we move through the world. They influence our relationships with others, with food, with media, and with anything to which we feel a strong attachment. Yet despite their centrality to human life, emotions are notoriously difficult to define. An emotion is a visceral experience—entangled with brain activity, felt through the body, surfacing through the skin, the eyes, or sometimes not at all. Emotions are at once universal and culturally inflected. They function as tools of social communication, yet remain deeply personal and subjective. In this lecture, we will begin to unpack these tensions and explore what emotions are, how they operate, and question whether something as seemingly simple as “happiness” means the same thing to the same people.

Sciences

• Title: Invisible Gases, Visible Consequences: Chemistry meets Policy to tackle Global Warming
• Abstract: In the media, we constantly hear about “greenhouse gases”, and you've most likely heard that methane and carbon dioxide are the main responsible compounds. Nevertheless, our atmosphere is full of different gases that contribute to the warming of Earth beyond these two. But which gases should we focus on, and who gets to decide what to do about them? In this lecture, we explore the chemistry and physics behind greenhouse gases as a foundation for understanding their behaviour and subsequent impact on the climate. We will also discuss the current policies in place to tackle these atmospheric issues and go further by proposing new ideas. 

Humanities

• Title: Film and Philosophy: An Introduction
• Abstract: Films are objects of philosophical reflection, but films themselves might also be said to produce philosophical reflection. This lecture will move back and forth between those two possibilities: we will philosophise about film (both the medium in general as well as particular films) and we will also ask how films themselves might be said to 'do' philosophy. As part of the lecture, we will look at scenes from different films and pair them with different thinkers in order to confirm that films, rather than fanciful flights into fantasy, can in fact be seen as philosophical explorations of reality.