Course Structure

Creative Cities: Intervention Models and Entrepreneurial Dynamics

• 5 ECTS
• The most up-to-date traits of dynamic cities are presented in the context of economic globalisation. In the 21st century, interdependence on a country and city scales, flexible work and networking, delocalisation, the new comparative advantages become new topics. Particularly, the new formulations presented by the processes of clusterisation are studied, in their search for new synergies between creative and innovative businesses. In this context, talent and innovation flows (open innovation) acquire new dimensions. The territory has not lost relevance in the new competitiveness specific to globalisation. However, public authorities use new mechanisms together with traditional ones, to become a node in the reception of business talent. In this block, we study traditional and innovative ways to generate entrepreneurial dynamics in the territory.  Case studies of Barcelona, Helsinki, and Milan are presented prior to student presentations on cities and their policies and programmes in Europe.

Global Political Ecology

• 5 ECTS
• Political ecology is the study of the relationships between political, economic and social factors with environmental issues. Political ecology understands every ecological issue as a political one. Politics has to do with the distribution of power and resources within a given group, community and society, within and across generations. Political ecology is at the confluence between ecologically rooted social sciences and the principles of political economy. How can ecological sustainability, social equity and economic development be simultaneously tackled? This interdisciplinary course introduces students to a global political economy of the environment and development. In particular, it explores ecological sustainability and discusses its relationship with equity and economic development. Proposals for sustainability transition are discussed both from a micro- and macroeconomics perspective. The course encompasses actions for a more sustainable world undertaken at multiple scales, both locally and globally, and by different actors, including nation states, international organisations, civil society and businesses.

Political Economy of Global Energy Markets (taught by Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)

• More information to come

Port Cities in Historical Perspective  (taught by Erasmus University Rotterdam)

• 10 ECTS
• This course offers an overview of the role of port cities as central nodes in international social, economic and cultural networks since 1500. Through their extensive maritime trade network, port cities provide a window on a wider world. As gateways they generate opportunities for the establishment of widespread international communities. Port cities are places of transhipment of goods, but the extensive maritime networks resulting from such trade connections also generated innovations, as international operating merchants used these networks to transfer technological knowledge and information. Already in pre-modern times, proto-global networks influenced local innovations. For instance, seventeenth century Rotterdam shows how an international merchant and refugee network, comprising of French and British scholars, created an early centre of Enlightenment. The nineteenth century has been called the age of port cities, and indeed in this period such cities more then ever became international centres of trade and cultural contacts. In the twentieth century, however, port cities faced enormous economic, social and infrastructural challenges. Despite, or due to, these challenges, post-industrial port societies are still recognised as important hub cities not just of goods, but also (and maybe even primarily) of knowledge. Students will learn how these creative urban communities adapted to different historical contexts and reacted to long-term developments.

• Advanced Topics in Globalisation
• Conflict Management in Negotiation
• Consultancy Projects (January Tracks A – D, June Track I)
• Doing Business in Europe
• Entrepreneurial Ecosystems
• Entrepreneurship in Emerging Sectors (optional for Tracks A – D only, core course for Track I)
• History of Entrepreneurship in the World
• Infrastructure Economics and Policy: From Nation Building to Global Linking
• Institutional or Company Placement
• Quantitative Analysis for International Business
• Strategic Management Research
• Topics in International Economics
• Topics in International Politics

• Sustainability of Welfare Policies in the Modern Era
  Sweden is a small country in Europe’s northern periphery. For many social scientists, however, the country is well known for two interrelated phenomena: a comprehensive and universalistic welfare state and industrial relations with a high level of organisation and well-coordinated collective bargaining. For policy practitioners  Sweden is quite often used as a shining example or a cautionary tale, depending on their policy preferences and ideological slant. Many a researcher doing comparative studies refers to Sweden or the Nordic countries as a contrasting example. For any student in the social sciences, a deeper understanding of the roots and complexities of the so-called Swedish model(s) in a broader context can therefore often be valuable. Through the juxtaposition of in-depth studies of the historical development in one country with comparisons with trajectories in other countries,  the course aims at developing the students’ ability to understand and analyse complex processes of economic and institutional change. Is an economy with a comprehensive welfare system and high wages competitive and sustainable in the modern, globalised world? The course combines a historical development of the Swedish Model (the reasons behind its rise and the causes behind its supposed decline) with comparisons with other welfare states within three different tracks. The first of these tracks is the development of the Swedish welfare state in comparison with other countries, the second concerns industrial relations and the labour market. The course will show how these developments are intertwined, from the nascent of the Swedish Model(s) for economic and social sustainability from the mid 20^th century to the models’ adaption, and some would say, its decline in the new Millennium. It will also deal with how these developments are related to the third track for which Sweden is also quite famous for in an international context: gender equality. In modern-day Sweden, dual-income family households are the norm, a normative order that is arguably both sustained and necessary for the economic sustainability of the welfare state. Assessment: The course is assessed through active participation in compulsory seminars and through written assignments.
• Sustainability of Financial Markets in the Modern Era
  Financial markets have been of great importance in the making of the modern economy. Ever since the world transitioned from agrarian to industrialised economies, most countries have depended on business cycles and the performance of financial markets for their growth and progress. From this perspective, sustainable financial markets have been fundamental for economic growth. On the other hand, these markets has also shown turbulent behaviour, even crashes. When financial disturbances have emerged at various times, the whole economy was affected. Such turbulences have been observed in the slowing of economic growth, rising unemployment and, occasionally, even political unrest. The central theme of this master course is to understand both sustainable patterns as well as why and how business cycle slumps and financial market crashes have tended to occur and reoccur, and in what ways such downturns have been managed throughout history. So, if business slumps and financial market turbulence have caused such big problems in terms of sustainability, why do they tend to re-emerge? During the course, we present examples of infamous downturns, which had a major impact when they occurred. Although the downturns differed with regards to origin, impact, and persistence, some argues that they also displayed certain common patterns and features. Such regularities, as well as the way the downturns have been managed, are highlighted in the course’s historical examples. Assessment: The course is assessed through active participation in compulsory seminars and though written assignments.

The listed courses are elective campus courses in English that should be of particular interest for GLOCAL students and with entry requirements that should suit you. Availability and admittance to these courses cannot be guaranteed. The course structure at Uppsala is revised each academic year.

Admittance is always dependent on the student having the correct entry requirements and the selection process for each course. Some of these courses might run in the same period as core courses. Please contact the Department of Economic History for more information: https://ekhist.uu.se/about-us/

• Causes of Peace
• Consumption and Material Culture in Early Modern Europe
• Emerging Security Threats
• European Integration
• Feminist Cultural Studies
• Gender, Power and Institutions
• Gender, War and Peace
• Humans, Animals and Environments
• Internationalisation of Business
• Modern Natures: Conflicts and Transformation
• Refugees and Migrants in a Global Historical Perspective
• Sustainability, Crises and Strategic Challenges in International Business
• Sustainability of Economic Thought
• Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives in Economic Geography
• The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State

Creative Industries in the Global Economy

• 5 ECTS
• Cultural and creative industries are increasingly recognized as important generators of revenues and jobs, as well as powerful drivers of cultural globalization, especially as the world moves into the digital age. One 2015 global survey estimated that they created $2.2 trillion in revenue and around 30 million jobs. Yet they are not new phenomenon. The high profile of multinational media companies is often described as dominance and cultural homogenization, yet it disguises the diversity and multipolar nature of the creative industries. Countries and cities have increasingly identified creative industries as an important means of economic development; cultural branding and have increasingly used historical “heritage” as a competitive advantage. We will critically examine the concept of creative industries and the “creative class,” how digitalization has made monetization more difficult and altered industry dynamics, and the relationship between cultural industries and development. The course examines why clusters and entrepreneurs emerge at specific points in time (such as Hollywood or Bollywood) and discusses how their competitiveness can be sustained. A special focus will be on how individual firms or clusters in specific places have emerged over time and altered their strategies to redesign themselves for a global digital age.

Doing Historical Research

• 5 ECTS

Histories in Motion: Migration, Identity, and Urban Life

• 5 ECTS
• This course will teach students how to work with primary sources to uncover the recent history of diversity. Oral history and interviewing will b core skills in this course. The aim is to bring students in contact with refugees and migrants to record life, family and group histories. Students will learn how they have to conduct interviews in a professional and critical way without neglecting the emotional and ethical dimensions of such a conversation. They will discover the theoretical and practical dimensions of an oral history project during lectures and field work. The second part of the course will teach students how to analyse and map photographs in an urban context. Pictures can show how marginalised groups made use of public space and how their representations can be distorted by the gaze of dominant groups in society. The students will also make an attempt to use GIS software to place these photos in urban spaces.

Rise of the Global City

• 5 ECTS
• This course discusses the recent global transformations in urban life. The rise of global cities since the 1970s was accompanied by a major increase in the urban population. More than half of the world population is living in cities after 2000, but the majority of these people does no longer live in rich centres, but in the poor slums of the urban periphery. The classical Weberian picture of the city as a place of freedom and development has been turned upside-down by these developments. Cities across the world are still centres of economic growth, but they face problems such as growing inequality, poverty, violence, pollution and rising sea levels. Students learn how a combination of socio-scientific and historical methods can help to analyse these challenges. This course uses Saskia Sassen’s concept of the global city as a starting point for a critical discussion of the current trends in urbanisation. Students discuss major texts in the field of global urbanisation during the weekly meetings and they will discuss the impact of historical changes on city life in different parts of the world.

• Global Governance and its Discontents
  This course deals with the emergence of Global Governance -and its discontents- in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will provide topics and themes that highlight human responses, reactions, and rejoinders towards the political processes of (global) institutionalizing and legalizing frameworks. We study transnational migrations; formal and informal intellectual and activist’s networks; and themes from popular culture like, sport, music and food that transcend national and international borders and shape identities beyond the ‘national’. The following twin notions will be dealt with: culture-identity, difference-equality, majority-minority, native-migrant, insiders-outsiders, hyperdiversity-uniformity; bottom-up-top down.
• Histories of Creativity and Innovation
  The term Creative Industries is a relatively recent concept coined in the late 1990s by new labour in Britain. Ever since this contested concept has evolved into an important policy instrument of national and local governments, the European Union, and United Nations, as well as a lively academic discourse. The workshop aims to historicize the concept and explore the historical roots of the creative industries and aims to analyse different sectors of the industry, including fashion, art markets, film, radio, television, music, design, theatre, tourism and video games. Furthermore, this course looks at innovations within large and small firms and networks across a range of industries. It explores the role of institutions and organizations, in particular governments or similar gatekeeping structures, and the diversity of innovation processes and across different sectors of the economy in the long twentieth century. Finally, it focuses on the effects of innovation and creativity on economic growth, international competitiveness, and employment. Different theoretical approaches emphasising cultural, national, regional, local, and firm-based factors, will be explored and applied to case studies selected by the students.
• Urban Transformations in a Globalising World
  Cities are the most dominant social organisation in the world since the beginning of the twentieth century with more than half of the world’s population living in urban centres. This process will continue with astonishing speed during the next decades. Scientists believe that more than 70 per cent of the global population will be urban by the middle of the twenty-first century. A historical approach to recent and less recent urban transformations can help us to understand the impact of these changes. However, the urban form takes different shapes all over the world: the urban spread of Los Angeles is different from the dense living in Hong Kong’s skyscrapers or the historical centre in Amsterdam. This means that urban transformations need to be understood in their local context. The rising globalisation does not only remind us of the necessity to study the variety in urban configurations, but it also urges scientists to look at the growing diversity within cities. Our current global ages pose large challenges regarding inequality, political participation, social and cultural diversity, claims on public space, housing, environmental footprints, transport, energy consumption and health. This workshop allows students to study urban developments from a historical perspective.
• Port Cities and Maritime History
  Maritime History has economic, social, military, cultural, technical and political aspects and all these aspects come together in ports. There people from all over the globe meet, have conflicts, exchange ideas or try to make profit. In the 19th and 20th centuries, port cities worldwide expanded into cultural and economic hubs, truly connecting global, regional and local maritime networks. Open sea access brought port cities even stronger dynamic communities, sparkling with creative proficiencies, innovating industries, intercultural relations, and new technologies. However, they also have less exciting sides as well, which prove to pose ongoing challenges. No city is ever finished transitioning.
• Power, Politics and SovereigntyThe present world order, as based on the 1941 Atlantic Charter, finds its expression in US hegemony and is organized under the aegis of the system of the United Nations. The balance of power that sustains this world order is changing; while the Western hegemony seems on the decline, the centre of economic and hegemonic gravity is steadily moving towards Asia. This change implies a reevaluation and a critical and historical analysis of the world order. Also, if we consider that the world order typically creates a hierarchy in (inter)national relations, we can assume that this brings forth resistance when moving towards oppression. This seminar addresses this resistance against the hierarchy of the world order by examining the historical origins of sovereignty. We will analyse sovereignty in three ways or tiers, namely internationally through ‘international law,’ nationally through the nation-state, and socially by examining citizenship. This seminar will help the students to reckon with the complex history of power relations by examining these three different tiers of sovereignty and the way they are interlinked in both national and international affairs.

• The Rise and Fall of the American Empire
  The rise of the United States as a global power has been one of the defining features of the twentieth century. Throughout the decades, the US has molded the international system in the attempt to create one in its own likeness. This seminar will help the students to reckon with the complex history of US’s positioning in the contemporary world and its varied entanglements in world affairs. Chronologically, the seminar will mostly focus on the twentieth century. Thematically, it will delve deeper into the various political, cultural, social, and economic dynamics that have shaped both the American foreign policy making process and its outcomes. The seminar will therefore touch on such crucial themes as exceptionalism, empire, Wilsonianism, multilateral diplomacy, world order, hegemony, resistance, and predominance of power. Eventually, the seminar will also sketch out the most important challenges that the US – due its crystallized global leadership – faces in our current days. By adopting a historical perspective, thus by letting students explore the linchpins of the historiographical debate on US foreign policy and by simultaneously inviting them to critically engage with relevant primary sources, the seminar will provide a broad overview of the US role in the world during the twentieth century (and beyond), and it will stress the transnational nature of the American nation and the structural interdependence it contributed to establishing on a global scale.

• Heritage and Fashion
• International Relations Theory
• Research Internship

• Global History of Marketing and Mass Consumption
  The course will familiarise students with basic aspects of the development of mass marketing structures in the 19th and 20th century. Special emphasis will be on rise of the advertising and consulting industries as creative centres of modern consumer capitalism. Texts and discussion will focus particularly on transnational exchanges, the global role of the American consumer society and regional differences and variations in consumer culture. In many industries, marketing long had to pursue global strategies with strong regional and local accents.
• Immigrant Entrepreneurship
  The seminar will introduce students to theories of entrepreneurship, migration and immigrant entrepreneurship. In what ways and why are business people with a migration background different from native entrepreneurs? The seminar will then move on to empirical cases studies from the early modern period to the present time. The examples are taken from different continents and economic sectors. They cover early modern trade diasporas and the transnational banking systems of the 19^th century, the role of Japanese immigrants in the interwar USA and the experience of Cuban refugees in the postwar era. The last third of the seminar will cover contemporary developments and look at immigrant entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley and the Turkish business community in Germany among other cases.
• Topics in Globalisation (taught by Universitat de Barcelona)
  The course offers insights into the global entanglements of markets and business sectors such as, the energy industry. The course analyses the interplay of economic and governmental actors as well as non-governmental organisations in changing global markets. Special attention will be paid to global differences between industrialised countries and resource rich countries, between centres and peripheries of the global economy.

• Behavioural Development Economics
• Econometrics
• Economic Situation of Latin America in the 21^st Century: Challenges of Economic Development in Latin America
• Empirical Political Economy
• Firms in International Trade
• Gender and Development
• Global Production: Firms, Contracts, and Trade Structure
• International Human Resource Management
• International Management
• Macroeconomics of Open Economies
• Poverty and Inequality
• Politics, Society, and Culture of Europe and Beyond
• Sustainable Development, Trade and Environment

• Course A: Entrepreneurship and Capitalism in the Global South: Latin America has experienced a dramatic transformation during the last 150 years. The course discusses the Latin American development through the entrepreneurs who shaped it. It offers students an opportunity to explore the historical development of as well as the future of entrepreneurship in Latin America, one of the world’s largest emerging markets. For that, the course looks at the dynamic relationship between states and markets and between the developed and developing areas of the world economy or global economy. Through a wide-ranging framework it offers students an opportunity to understand the changing role of entrepreneurs and how they created business organizations in different contexts and institutional settings. Latin America offers rich, and often traumatic historical conditions, especially concerning the impact of globalization and economic cycles. By placing business in a broad political, economic and cultural context, the course covers the changes in the structure of Latin America businesses over the last 150 years, the winners and losers from capitalist expansion. The course uses a variety of case studies, academic articles and book chapters, as well as newspaper articles, company cases from different countries of Latin America. It is organized in three modules, providing a dynamic framework for exploring the challenging decisions Latin American entrepreneurs and firms have faced in the different eras of the last century and a half in Latin America, until current conditions. By reviewing the historical evidence on Latin American entrepreneurship, the course is relevant to all future leaders operating in today’s global context, since students will learn to understand how the modern business environment came about, and to think about how value can be derived in volatile circumstances with unpredictable political contexts as well as micro and macroeconomic shifts.
• Course B: Sustainability Issues in the Global South: Latin America is an exceptional case to analyse the challenges of sustainable development. On one hand, poverty rates throughout the region have declined steadily during the last decades. Endowed with one of the largest stocks of available land for agricultural expansion, the region is also one of the most urbanised in the developing world. On the other, the region hosts many of the global ‘biodiversity hotspots’ where critical biomes (e.g. tropical rainforest, grass savanna, alpine tundra) are severely threatened by deforestation, habitat loss, and pollution from extractive industries. Moreover, most countries in Latin America still rank high as some of the most unequal in terms of income and land distribution. Understanding these contrasting and often contradictory realities admits no simplistic approaches.

  This course introduces some of the main environmental and social justice issues that define nature society interactions in the region and invites students to explore some provoking questions: what is distinctive —if anything— about the main issues and challenges of sustainability in Latin America? Is it possible for the region to turn those challenges into a source of widespread prosperity? If so, how? From an initial historical analysis about how space and territory were configured right after Spanish conquest, the course moves on to address the political economy of contemporary sustainability challenges in the region. It concludes with a critical reflection on future possibilities.

  Founded on participant-centred methods whereby the pedagogical focus shifts to students as active contributors to knowledge generation, the course expects all participants to engage thoroughly with reading materials, cases and discussions as a necessary condition for individual and collective learning. At the end, participants will develop a deeper and more acute understanding of the nature, complexity and opportunities underlying sustainable development in the region in the hope that this will inspire them to help bring about profound, scalable change.

Consultandes – Consultancy in Environment Management:

• CONSULTANDES is a consultancy project in which students lead the design of an innovative solution to an environmental corporate challenge. Students strengthen their leadership skills and managerial environmental knowledge by solving real life corporate challenges. The process is carried out in groups of 3 to 4 students from diverse disciplines. The agenda of this course seeks to help students to acquire practical and research experience in topics that are relevant for environmental corporate strategy and practices.In the consulting project, the student is expected to acquire practical experience in the development of a consulting methodology on environmental management issues, such as: i) environmental strategies; ii) environmentally sustainable business models; iii) innovations that lead to environmental improvements; and iv) organizational change processes towards environmental sustainability.The dynamics of Consultandes follows the practice of project management. Through planning meetings student groups are organized and use different work methodologies that include project management as well as specialized consultancies on particular topics in environmental management. In addition, steering committees monitor the development of each project. These committees are formal advisory spaces where the client, the group of students and the professors participate. The course methodology includes tools to measure learning and knowledge integration.

Management for Circular Economy

• Societal changes as part of the pandemic crisis, require innovative models for production and consumption that generate employment, spur economic development, attend new societal paradigms, and keep within a safe boundary of ecosystem functions and services. The circular economy proposes such model by redefining growth through decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources, designing waste out of the system and motivating the transition to renewable energy sources.
  In a circular economy, economic activity builds and rebuilds overall system health. The concept recognizes the importance of the economy needing to work effectively at all scales – for large and small businesses, for organizations and individuals, globally and locally–. Transitioning to a circular economy does not only amount to adjustments aimed at reducing the negative impacts of the linear economy. Rather, it represents a systemic shift that builds long-term resilience, generates business and economic opportunities, and provides environmental and societal benefits.
  The circular economy implies a transformative change in operation, and strategy of organizations and systems in order to consider dynamic interactions between social activities and biophysical environment. Therefore, the scope of circular economy is highly complex decision making, involving many variables and their interactions, and interdisciplinary, drawing knowledge from various disciplines across science, management, and policy.
  The purpose of this course is to provide students with an understanding of social-environment intersections of circular economy and introduce examples of circularity strategies and practices from various scales and perspectives. Through the course, students are expected to enhance their understanding about complexity, cause – effect relationships, and dilemma in circular economy issues, particularly in the context of Colombia, and hone their capacities to develop innovative approaches to address these issues.The key questions that the course will examine are:
  • Why the circular economy?
  • What are the core principles of management for circular economy?
  • What are the examples of circular economy strategies at an organization, a group of organizations, regions, and nations?
  • How to translate the circular economy into actions? How to mobilize various stakeholders?

Sustainable Value Chains

• More information to follow

• Field Research on Industry Dynamics and Sustainability (Credit Requirements 6ECTS)
  • On-site Research Training A (6ECTS) or
  • On-site Research Training B (6ECTS)

• On-site Research Training
  The goal of the course is to help students understand better the current economic and social situation in Japan by participating in 2 to 3 study trips to Japanese companies, government agencies and other institutions. Each study trip will include a pre-trip study session and a post-trip discussion session, after which the students should submit essays to the respective instructors in charge. By participating in this course students are able to develop their understanding of the economy and management in practice, and develop their practical and academic skills in conducting field surveys. Each year there is some variation in the exact scheduling and sites visited. Examples of sites visited include: The Shimadzu Foundation; Lake Biwa Canal Museum; Keihanna Open Innovation Center; Kyoto City Central Wholesale Market; Panasonic Eco Technology Center; Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology; and a Toyota car manufacturing plant.

• Courses in Industry Dynamics and Sustainability (Credit Requirements: 12ECTS; two of three courses)
  • Economic Development and Policy in the Asia-Pacific (6ECTS)
  • Industries and Global Competition (6ECTS)
  • International Development Assistance Policy (6ECTS)

• Master Thesis Design (6ECTS)

• Advanced Academic Writing & Presentation (6ECTS)
• Critical Consumption Studies (6ECTS)
• Historical Approaches to Business and Economics B (3ECTS)
• International Agribusiness Studies(6ECTS)
• International Political Economy of Agriculture (6ECTS)
• Multiple Perspectives on Management (3ECTS)
• Qualitative Research Methods (6ECTS)
• South East Asia in the Global Economy: Past and Present (6ECTS)