Core Courses

This course is catered for students with no prior experience in the language. We will start the course by introducing pronunciation, reading, typing, and writing. Great emphasis will be placed upon standard pronunciation, listening comprehension, and everyday “survival” language. Various supplementary listening materials will be used from the beginning of this course to give students an authentic, practical way to learn correct pronunciation and reinforce class lessons. Students will also be exposed to the language and culture via movies and cultural information.

This course aims to provide students with basic knowledge and analytical tools for a more concrete understanding of countries and regions in the world by introducing two major disciplines in the social sciences, i.e., comparative politics and area studies.

This course presents a general introduction to the history of East Asia (Southeast Asia) from the 17th century through the present with a focus on China, Japan and Korea (Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam).

The course will be built around lectures, discussions and readings with the purpose of creating a greater awareness and understanding of the Southeast Asia region. A major focus will be the nature of development particularly in the contemporary period. But in addition the history and culture of the nations will be discussed as they apply to development conditions. Especially important are spatial aspects of the various development situations. Environmental settings, historical circumstances, as well as, institutions and culture are recognized as keys to the understanding of development conditions and progress. Major emphases coincide with themes of population, urbanization, resources, agrarian structure, industrialization in the global economy and rural development. Select concepts and illustrations will be used to highlight, identify, and explain development progress or the lack thereof. The region includes Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam, Timor and the Philippines. In addition to lectures and discussions frequent use will be made of slides, videos, and films which focus on a variety of issues within these countries.

The main goal of the course is to enable students to use English in their further academic studies on the ‘Economics and Politics in Asia’ BA HSE Double Degree Programme and develop their language and communication skills in English to the B2-B2+ level according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. (CEFR) in multiple contexts, such as reading and listening comprehension, written and oral expression, communicative interaction. At the same time, the course is aimed at promoting autonomous learning, self-assessment, peer-correction and critical thinking. The course provides authentic and culturally enriching materials on a wide variety of topics for discussion.

This course is catered for students with no prior experience in the language. We will start the course by introducing pronunciation, reading, typing, and writing. Great emphasis will be placed upon standard pronunciation, listening comprehension, and everyday “survival” language. Various supplementary listening materials will be used from the beginning of this course to give students an authentic, practical way to learn correct pronunciation and reinforce class lessons. Students will also be exposed to the language and culture via movies and cultural information.

This is a required course for the Politics and Economics in Asia, the HSE-KIC dual degree program students. This course examines contemporary social and political developments in East Asia. Throughout the course, we will analyze the behavior of state and non-state institutions and actors, and the subsequent effects on the constituents they serve. How do nation-states form, and how are they held together? What is development? What would be the optimal way to design institutions in a democracy? How do authoritarian regimes survive? How can political institutions and policies shift deeply held cultural attitudes in society? How do race and ethnicity affect political attitudes and social mobilization? We will explore these and related questions drawing on the cases of China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. The overall goal of the course is to ascertain the impact, effect, and significance of the different stakeholders – domestic and external – that have shaped East Asia’s development in the 21st century and consider the potential for greater socio-political reforms in the future.

This course is designed to introduce and analyze international relations in East Asia. Clearly, East Asia is one of the most dynamic regions in world politics. During the Cold War, East Asia has gone through intense competition and conflicts between hegemonic powers and among states in the region. In the post-Cold War era, East Asia has been not only the engine of the global economy thanks to Japan and China, but also the center of major power shift, such as rising China and declining the US. This course will begin with the question of what is East Asia, particularly from the eyes of South Korea. Then, we will examine the sources of conflict and cooperation in terms of security, politics, and economy through historical evolution.

East Asian economies have achieved rapid and sustained developments for quite a long period of time. The region as a whole has now been one of the three major poles of the world economy. Some call this phenomenon a miracle, but others see it as a logical consequence of well-concerted efforts of the countries involved. Some emphasize the common elements of the East Asian economic development, while others look into significant differences among individual countries’ development experience. While some argue that the growth engines of East Asian countries are not stoppable, others point out that East Asian miracles are over. This course is to help students understand various issues related with East Asian development and get an in-depth knowledge of the process of rapid economic development.

This course is intended to provide a market-oriented framework for analyzing the major types of financial decisions made by corporations. The primary objective is to provide a framework, concepts and analytical tools to identify and solve financial management problems. It also introduces basic financial analysis techniques to transform concepts into practice, with emphasis on topics in the corporate finance area. It serves as the basis for all other courses in the area of corporate finance and provides basic tools that every business student will need to be successful in his or her chosen career.

IPE is a field that explores the interaction between domestic and international factors as well as political and economic forces that shape/change international relations. The topics include IPE theoretical perspectives, international trade theories, and regimes, global monetary/financial regimes, cross-border investment and production, international development, and various globalization issues. Some of important contemporary IPE issues will be discussed during the class with mandatory/voluntary student presentation.

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the theorisation of security as a pillar of the study of international relations and world politics. The course will analyse the frameworks and meanings of ‘security’ in international relations before, during and after the Cold War. It will critically examine – within the context of globalisation – the different conceptualisations of ‘security’ offered by the main theoretical fields. Finally, it will discuss new issues being raised in contemporary security studies, with a view to sketching out future implications for study and practice. Topics and issues like the environment, gender, peace processes, terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction (among others) are highly relevant in today’s globalised world. The course will seek to address their significance for security studies, and explore the ways in which they alter, transform or interact with traditional notions of “security”.

Learning Objectives

• To help students familiarise themselves with the notion of ‘security’ in international relations and world politics.

• To help them understand the mechanisms of international, national, regional and individual decision-making with regards to security politics.

The course has been designed for the students of the ‘Economics and Politics in Asia’ BA HSE Double Degree Programme and is aimed at preparing them for the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) exam. The course will enable students to develop their academic reading, listening, speaking, writing and debate skills. We will use plenty of authentic and culturally-enriching materials as well as some of the latest IELTS preparation books. This is a blended-learning course, which involves a lot of online and offline (in-class) interaction, training and practice.

The purpose of the course Asian Language (Advanced) is the development of Asian language communicative competence of students in the complexity of its components: writing, speaking, intercultural and academic competence, which are parts of the professional competence.

Mastering the discipline "Asian language for professional communication" provides student with skills necessary to perform translation of socio-political texts and speeches.

This course aims to explore the important concepts and major issues in open macroeconomics such as the determination of exchange rates and how economic policies work in an open economy with free trade of goods and asset.

This course aims to explore the important concepts and issues in International trade.

The objective of this course is to integrate your knowledge from previous international studies courses (Economics, Politics & International Relations, Area Studies and Business), and to study real businesses from the view of top management. You will suggest the competitive actions these businesses should take for the future.