Hello everyone, my name is Nathalie Schiffino,
and I am a political science teacher at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium).
What will we be doing together during this MOOC
"Discover Political Science"?
We will attempt to figure out some important concepts
of our scientific field and everyone's daily life, such as:
what is power? What are its implications?
How does a democracy work? What should we do today with ideologies such as liberalism or socialism?
This is going to be our concern during this MOOC.
There is a whole team here to support you during this MOOC "Discover Political Science".
This team consists of professors Pierre Baudewyns, Vincent Legrand,
Min Reuchamps, myself and others.
In this course we will obviously look into institutions, political ones,
such as the UN: the United Nations, but we will also learn that politics
is not only about institutions, it's also about encounters, conflicts,
cooperation, prohibition, protests, and mobilisations
that lead to changes in democracy.
Whether one takes an interest in politics or not,
politics is still very interested in us and that is possibly, or rather, it certainly is a very good reason
to take interest in politics.
How are we going to proceed in concrete terms?
Well, we are going to start with important concepts, theories and we are going to try
to apply these concepts to specific cases around us and sometimes,
we'll even send you out on the field to do your own research.
Students will make many encounters,
both conceptual encounters with many authors
but also with concrete actors, who do politics day by day.
We are ready to start the MOOC,
welcome to all of you and see you soon.
