Student blogs

Teachers

The course director was Daniel Falkstedt and we also had some guest lectors. Melody Almroth was a teaching assistant.

Course Themes

• Issues in philosophy of science with relevance to the public health research
• Selected theoretical frameworks and central concepts in public health such as normality, diagnosis, institution and actors
• Theoretical and methodological aspects of studying social determinants of health
• Principles, concepts and theories reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals in Agenda 2030

Course Schedule

This was a 8-day intensive and 100% online course. The lectures started at 10:00 and finished at 15:00 in order to watch e-lectures and to read related reading literatures in the self-study time.

Assignments

We had 2 writing assignments instead of an individual written examination.

Assignment 1: What are the differences and similarities between police work and science work?

Assignment 2: theory essay in which concepts are defined and employed in a critical analysis of an empirical case

This was an exercise for the future degree project. To pass the exam we had to discuss some of the core concepts from the course and refer to the course literature.

Group Work

We did not have any group work or assignments, but teachers gave us some discussion points and we discussed in breakout rooms on Zoom. here are the examples:

• How do the SDGs fit into the mentioned structural theoretical frameworks?
• At what level are the different SDGs most important?
• Is there anything that doesn’t fit within these frameworks?
• Do these theories help us to understand the relationship between SDGs and health?
• What are our assumptions?
• How can these theories be applied through the representation, tin-opener, and lens approach?

Exam

As I mentioned before, the course was examined through an individual assignment. The assignment was graded fail, pass, or pass with distinction.

Finally

Overall, this course was well structured despite of the intense schedule. Personally, I was not keen to theories and philosophy in the beginning, however we could started learning from some basic concepts about theories, theoretical framework, ontology, epistemology, etc in the course. The teachers and the TA helped us a lot to understand these concepts.

I hope this review helped you to get to know about our program. Feel free to contact me if you have any kind of questions! Arigato 🙂

Sakura