Courses

Across Europe university teachers use Inventing Europe in their classrooms. Feel welcome to join our teaching community. Below you find a wide range of courses. Our teachers explain how they employ(ed) our digital museum to reach their learning objectives. We hope that their experiences inspire you with creative, innovative, and interactive ideas for your own teaching.

Are you curious to learn more? Or do you want to establish joint cross-border assignments for your students together with one of our teachers in the future? Feel free to contact us, or email one of our teachers directly. 

Academic year 2014-2015

SEMESTER 2

Applied Ethnology 

  • Course description: This course for last year MA Ethnology students explores the practical application of ethnological knowledge for the interpretation of political, social and economic problems. The course deals with questions like: How did national and international politics construct material and immaterial heritage? And in what ways did national construction control communism?
  • Using Inventing Europe: Through Inventing Europe the students learn how to contextualize objects. The assignments focus on searching the stories behind the objects, and finding the logic behind the exhibit tours. At the end of the course the students presented their virtual tours related to the applied ethnology.
  • Teacher: Dr. Elitsa Stoilova, University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria – elitsastoilova@gmail.com

Inventing Europe: Economic and Technological Exchange in Modern Europe

  • Course description:   - 
  • Using Inventing Europe:  “I asked my students to create – as guest curators – a tour for the Inventing Europe website. My students were asked to explore the Making Europe book series and combine their research with the exploration of digital cultural heritage objects.”
  • Teacher: Prof. dr. Dagmara Jajesniak-Quast, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt, Germany - jajesniak-quast@europa-uni.de

History of Computing and Telecommunications

  • Course description:   This course deals with the history of computing and telecommunications. It is given to students from the Department of Computing and Telecommunications as well as, as an elective course, to students from the Department of History of Science and Philosophy
  • Using Inventing Europe:  “I invited my students to contribute (as a guest curator) a new tour to the ‘Inventing Europe: Digital Museum of European Science and Technology’  (https://www.inventingeurope.eu/tours/). The topic of the new tour had to be on the co-construction of users and computers through advertisements in Greece. The tours were to pay attention to the relationship between gender identities and computing parts. Based on the chapter from the dissertation by Hara Konsta that we discussed in class, I expected students to choose the advertisements that they would like to see included in this tour (choose 4 advertisements) and write an essay (in English or in Greek) that interprets them (no more than 400 words).”
  • Teacher: Dr. Aristotle Tympas, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens – tympas@phs.uoa.gr 

Economic Anthropology

  • Course description: This second year BA course in Ethnology and Social Anthropology explores the main areas of economic life – production, exchange and consumption – from an anthropological point of view. Apart from focusing on activities and practices related to the cycle of production of goods and services, the course pays attention to labor and how people think about labor in different societies.
  • Using Inventing Europe: “Along with the lectures this course offered seminars too. One of them discussed consumption in particular and it was exactly there where I used IE as an illustration of the consumption as a major part of daily life. I presented  the platform, explained its main objectives and we “went” through the “Daily Lives”- exhibition.”
  • Teacher: Dr. Dobrinka Parusheva, University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria – clio_dp@yahoo.co.uk

Introduction to the History of Technology

  • Course description:   BA course, a first year introductory course in ‘History of Technology: This is an introduction in history of technology from the Industrial Revolution to the late 20th century. The aim is to provide the students with an understanding of technology as social and political phenomenon.’
  • Using Inventing Europe: ”I have 115 students and in groups of four they have to use the museum and form their tour and then present it in the class and the final session. In the meantime based on the themes of the museum I am giving lectures. For example on the history of Energy Technologies and networks. Also we visit 3 local technology museums and the students will have to do some comparisons between the way history is presented in the real museum and in the virtual.”
  • Teacher: Dr. Stathis Arapostathis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens – arapost@phs.uoa.gr

  SEMESTER 1

Cultural Heritage in a Virtual Environment

  • Course description: This Master course for Management of Cultural Heritage students explores the options of cultural heritage in the virtual environment. Students learn to think in new creative ways about possibilities which digitization and new technologies offer for cultural heritage in the contemporary world.
  • Using Inventing Europe: “I used IE to show a possible way of using digitized cultural heritage and as one of the participants in the Europeana platform.  I “visited” one of the IE exhibitions and did three of the tours, to illustrate how the site works. One of the assignments for the course was to create a virtual tour. IE tour mode was the example to follow, although students could use objects from other websites and platforms too; or other objects, not yet digitized which they needed to digitize before using.” 
  • Teacher: Dr. Dobrinka Parusheva, University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria – clio_dp@yahoo.co.uk 

The big economic theorists…

  • Course description:   - 
  • Using Inventing Europe:  “I asked my students to create – as guest curators – a tour for the Inventing Europe website. My students were asked to explore the Making Europe book series and combine their research with the exploration of digital cultural heritage objects.”
  • Teacher: Prof. dr. Dagmara Jajesniak-Quast, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt, Germany - jajesniak-quast@europa-uni.de

History of Technology and Engineering

  • Course Description: This course aims at providing students with a core of concepts which allow them to develop their own scientific and technical culture.  Our purpose is to lead students to think about their future work as engineers and ask themselves crucial questions such as “what is technology?”, “does technology drive (European)  History?” “is there a social responsibility/ethics in the work of the engineer/technologist?” Bearing these questions in mind a set of significant moments in the European history is selected. Machine and technical systems are the starting point of the analysis of each topic; further on we analyze these material signs as both agents and products of social life.
  • Using Inventing Europe:  “One of the assignments I gave the students was to plan an exhibit with technological objects that had to be presented to an imaginary public that knew nothing about them. They researched the IE site and build their own stories in a similar way.”
  • Teacher: Prof. dr. Maria Paula Diogo, New University of Lisbon, Portugal – mpd@fct.unl.pt

 

Academic year 2013-2014

SEMESTER 2


Applied Ethnology 

  • Course description: This course for last year MA Ethnology students explores the practical application of ethnological knowledge for the interpretation of political, social and economic problems. The course deals with questions like: How did national and international politics construct material and immaterial heritage? And in what ways did national construction control communism?
  • Using Inventing Europe: Through Inventing Europe the students learn how to contextualize objects. The assignments focus on searching the stories behind the objects, and finding the logic behind the exhibit tours. At the end of the course the students presented their virtual tours related to the applied ethnology.
  • Teacher: Dr. Elitsa Stoilova, University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria – elitsastoilova@gmail.com

Economic Anthropology

  • Course description: This second year BA course in Ethnology and Social Anthropology explores the main areas of economic life – production, exchange and consumption – from an anthropological point of view. Apart from focusing on activities and practices related to the cycle of production of goods and services, the course pays attention to labor and how people think about labor in different societies.
  • Using Inventing Europe: “Along with the lectures this course offered seminars too. One of them discussed consumption in particular and it was exactly there where I used IE as an illustration of the consumption as a major part of daily life. I presented  the platform, explained its main objectives and we “went” through the “Daily Lives”- exhibition.”
  • Teacher: Dr. Dobrinka Parusheva, University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria – clio_dp@yahoo.co.uk

Introduction to the History of Technology

  • Course description:   BA course, a first year introductory course in ‘History of Technology: This is an introduction in history of technology from the Industrial Revolution to the late 20th century. The aim is to provide the students with an understanding of technology as social and political phenomenon.’
  • Using Inventing Europe: ”I have 115 students and in groups of four they have to use the museum and form their tour and then present it in the class and the final session. In the meantime based on the themes of the museum I am giving lectures. For example on the history of Energy Technologies and networks. Also we visit 3 local technology museums and the students will have to do some comparisons between the way history is presented in the real museum and in the virtual.”
  • Teacher: Dr. Stathis Arapostathis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens – arapost@phs.uoa.gr

SEMESTER 1

10 Years of EU East Enlargement – a balance

  • Course description:   Vor 10 Jahren fand die größte Erweiterung in der Geschichte der Europäischen Union statt. In den Jahren 2004 und 2007 wurde die EU von 15 auf 27 Mitgliedsländer ausgedehnt. Dieser für die Zukunft Europas nicht zu überschätzende Schritt war einerseits mit großen Hoffnungen verbunden, stellte jedoch gleichzeitig auch eine beachtliche Herausforderung für das politische System der EU dar, die viele Befürchtungen sowohl bei den alten als auch bei den neuen Mitgliedsländern mit sich brachte. Im Seminar werden die Dynamik der Beitrittsprozesse sowie die institutionellen und politischen Veränderungen nach der s. g. Osterweiterung aus der praktischen Perspektive der EU-Politik umfassend beleuchtet. Daraufhin werden die nach dieser historischen Zäsur aufgetretenen Entwicklungen vor dem Hintergrund der sich in Europa abzeichnenden Wirkungen der Weltwirtschaftskrise, der zunehmenden Europaskepsis und des Aufstiegs der nationalistischen Tendenzen sowie der sichtbaren Integrationsmüdigkeit unter Heranziehung einschlägiger theoretischer Ansätze analysiert, wobei das Augenmerk insbesondere auf Polen, das flächen- und bevölkerungsstärkste Beitrittsland sowie der wichtigste östliche Nachbar Deutschlands, gerichtet wird.
  • Using Inventing Europe:  “IE was used in the students presentations and papers especially when we discussed the pre-history of EU and the questions of overcoming “economic backwardness” in the EU in historical perspective”
  • Teacher: Prof. dr. Dagmara Jajesniak-Quast, together with  Prof. Günter Verheugen, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt, Germany - jajesniak-quast@europa-uni.de

Cultural Heritage in a Virtual Environment

  • Course description: This Master course for Management of Cultural Heritage students explores the options of cultural heritage in the virtual environment. Students learn to think in new creative ways about possibilities which digitization and new technologies offer for cultural heritage in the contemporary world.
  • Using Inventing Europe: “I used IE to show a possible way of using digitized cultural heritage and as one of the participants in the Europeana platform.  I “visited” one of the IE exhibitions and did three of the tours, to illustrate how the site works. One of the assignments for the course was to create a virtual tour. IE tour mode was the example to follow, although students could use objects from other websites and platforms too; or other objects, not yet digitized which they needed to digitize before using.” 
  • Teacher: Dr. Dobrinka Parusheva, University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria – clio_dp@yahoo.co.uk 

From Cold War to Globalization: the perspective of business and technology history

  • Course Description: Master students with a major in history.  The course reviews the history of the technological and business relations between Eastern and Western Europe during the Twentieth Century, exploring continuities and discontinuities, legacies and ruptures, common projects, blurred boundaries and cooperation spaces and focusing on different “actors”, as enterprises, experts, institutions.
  • Using Inventing Europe: “I asked students to read one story from Inventing Europe every week, and prepare for debate in class by searching similarities in perspectives and structures.”
  • Teacher: Dr. Valentina Fava, Helsinki University, Finland – valentina.fava@helsinki.fi

History of Technology and Engineering

  • Course Description: This course aims at providing students with a core of concepts which allow them to develop their own scientific and technical culture.  Our purpose is to lead students to think about their future work as engineers and ask themselves crucial questions such as “what is technology?”, “does technology drive (European)  History?” “is there a social responsibility/ethics in the work of the engineer/technologist?” Bearing these questions in mind a set of significant moments in the European history is selected. Machine and technical systems are the starting point of the analysis of each topic; further on we analyze these material signs as both agents and products of social life.
  • Using Inventing Europe:  “One of the assignments I gave the students was to plan an exhibit with technological objects that had to be presented to an imaginary public that knew nothing about them. They researched the IE site and build their own stories in a similar way.”
  • Teacher: Prof. dr. Maria Paula Diogo, New University of Lisbon, Portugal – mpd@fct.unl.pt

Introduction to European Studies (Erasmus program)

  • Course description: This course introduces the historiography of Europe. It focuses on the 19th century, a period when modern Europe emerged on both ideal and practical (economic integration) level. Students analyze aims, achievements and methods used by historians studying various aspects of the formation of Europe as a social, cultural, and economic unit. 
  • Using Inventing Europe: ”I used Inventing Europe as a source of  teaching materials for my PowerPoint presentations. I also used the website for an assignment, in which students had to write a short essay about 19th transnational governance in Europe with other topics than those available at Inventing Europe, but were similar in perspective and structure.” 
  • Teacher: Dr. Jira Janac, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic -jira.janac@gmail.com

Academic year 2012-2013

SEMESTER 2


Applied Ethnology 

  • Course description: This course for last year BA Ethnology students explores the practical application of ethnological knowledge for the interpretation of political, social and economic problems. The course deals with questions like: How did national and international politics construct material and immaterial heritage? And in what ways did national construction control communism?
  • Using Inventing Europe: Through Inventing Europe the students learn how to contextualize objects. The assignments focus on searching the stories behind the objects, and finding the logic behind the exhibit tours. At the end of the course the students presented their virtual tours related to the applied ethnology.
  • Teacher: Dr. Elitsa Stoilova, University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria – elitsastoilova@gmail.com

Economic Anthropology

  • Course description: This second year BA course in Ethnology and Social Anthropology explores the main areas of economic life – production, exchange and consumption – from an anthropological point of view. Apart from focusing on activities and practices related to the cycle of production of goods and services, the course pays attention to labor and how people think about labor in different societies.
  • Using Inventing Europe: “Along with the lectures this course offered seminars too. One of them discussed consumption in particular and it was exactly there where I used IE as an illustration of the consumption as a major part of daily life. I presented  the platform, explained its main objectives and we “went” through the “Daily Lives”- exhibition.”
  • Teacher: Dr. Dobrinka Parusheva, University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria – clio_dp@yahoo.co.uk

Economy and Politics in 20th century Europe

  • Course Description: This course is a follow up on the course ‘Introduction to European Studies’. It covers the historiography of 20th century Europe and explores main economic and political issues from European perspective. 
  • Using Inventing Europe: ”I used Inventing Europe as a source of  teaching materials for PowerPoint presentations. I also used the website for an assignment, in which students had to write a short essay about 19th transnational governance in Europe with other topics than those available at Inventing Europe, but were similar in perspective and structure.”
  • Teacher: Dr. Jira Janac, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic – jira.janac@gmail.com

Hidden Integration in 20th century Europe

  • Course Description: This course deals with non-political integration processes in twentieth century Europe. It analyzes the practical realization of integration through all kinds of networks. This course teaches that European integration worked especially from bottom up, and not top down, i.e. from governments. 
  • Using Inventing Europe: “I illustrate the topics of my lectures with the stories on Inventing Europe. For each class, the students read a theoretical paper on a certain aspect of the twentieth century, and compared and contrasted the paper with one of the stories on Inventing Europe. Students learned to understand the links between macro and micro perspective on history and to critically evaluate chosen narrative structure and empirical data.”
  • Teacher: Dr. Jira Janac, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic – jira.janac@gmail.com

History of Computing and Telecommunications

  • Course Description: This course for BA students explores, among other things, the analogue-digital debate, the history of human computers, the transition from the computer as a mathematical machine to the computer as a communication device, continuities and discontinuities from the history of the telegraph to the history of the internet, and the emergence of nanotechnology.
  • Using Inventing Europe: Students select a story from Inventing Europe and expand on it by archival research on digitized archives of Greek and international newspapers.
  • Teacher: Dr. Aristotle Tympas, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens – tympas@phs.uoa.gr  

History of Science and Technology in the Antiquity

  • Course Description: This course deals with the history of science and technology during the age of antiquity. It delves into perceptions of ancient science and technology in modernity.
  • Using Inventing Europe: Students could expand on the stories available through Inventing Europe by thinking of ways to compare these histories to histories of the antiquity. An example tried was to expand on the IE history of telegraphy by adding the history of telegraphy in antiquity.
  • Teacher: Dr. Aristotle Tympas, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens – tympas@phs.uoa.gr 

History of Technology

  • Course description:  This course introduces history of technology, from the Industrial Revolution to the late 20th century. Students obtain an understanding of technology as a social and political phenomenon.
  • Using Inventing Europe: Inventing Europe was used as preparation for lectures, as reading material and as point of departure for discussion, as well as the basis for group presentation at the end of the course. The students have read one tour on energy and visited the gas museum in Athens. At the end, the students wrote a one-page report on comparing the actual museum and the Inventing Europe digital museum.
  • Teacher: Dr. Stathis Arapostathis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens – arapost@phs.uoa.gr

Technology and European Integration

  • Course description: This Master course teaches students to look at European integration history differently, exploring top-down and bottom-up perspectives on building Europe through technology that looks beyond Europe defined ad the European Union. To pass the course, students create their own themed exhibition that is worthy of the Inventing Europe digital museum.
  • Using Inventing Europe: “We use Inventing Europe not only as reading material for our students, but also as basis for their assignments. To pass the course they have to create a tour that in-depth discusses the content of the course.” 
  • Teachers: Prof. dr. Johan Schot and Dr. Suzanne Lommers, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands – s.b.lommers@tue.nl

SEMESTER 1

 
Building Europe on Transnational Infrastructures

  • Course description: This Bachelor course analyzes the historical construction of Europe via large infrastructure projects. T he course teaches basic academic skills, such as academic writing, academic research, critical thinking, applying source criticism, and learning to reference properly.
  • Using Inventing Europe: “We use Inventing Europe to teach our students a bottom-up perspective on European integration. A large number of tours in the museum are part of the literature list. Our students learn source criticism and object contextualization at the hand of objects in the museum and learn to write  academic web texts for specific audiences at the hand narratives on the website. To pass the course, in groups, students create their own virtual tour.”
  • Teachers: Pr. dr. Johan Schot and Dr. Suzanne Lommers, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands – s.b.lommers@tue.nl 

Cultural Heritage in a Virtual Environment

  • Course description: This Master course for Management of Cultural Heritage students explores the options of cultural heritage in the virtual environment. Students learn to think in new creative ways about possibilities which digitization and new technologies offer for cultural heritage in the contemporary world.
  • Using Inventing Europe:“I used IE to show a possible way of using digitized cultural heritage and as one of the participants in the Europeana platform. I “visited” one of the IE exhibitions and did three of the tours, to illustrate how the site works. One of the assignments for the course was to create a virtual tour. IE tour mode was the example to follow, although students could use objects from other websites and platforms too; or other objects, not yet digitized which they needed to digitize before using.” 
  • Teacher: Dr. Dobrinka Parusheva, University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria – clio_dp@yahoo.co.uk 

Introduction to European Studies (Erasmus program)

  • Course description: This course introduces the historiography of Europe. It focuses on the 19th century, a period when modern Europe emerged on both ideal and practical (economic integration) level. Students analyze aims, achievements and methods used by historians studying various aspects of the formation of Europe as a social, cultural, and economic unit. 
  • Using Inventing Europe: ”I used Inventing Europe as a source of  teaching materials for my PowerPoint presentations. I also used the website for an assignment, in which students had to write a short essay about 19th transnational governance in Europe with other topics than those available at Inventing Europe, but were similar in perspective and structure.” 
  • Teacher: Dr. Jira Janac, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic -jira.janac@gmail.com

History of Europe

  • Course Description: This course aims at providing the students with an overview of European history, from the Middle Ages to the present, focusing on economic, social and political topics. Special attention is given to the Portuguese case, both on a national and international basis, using both the comparative and the global history approaches. The role played by Portugal in the European arena and its strategies to face the tensions within Europe deserve particular attention. The course  promotes the understanding of the European identity as the outcome of a continuous flux of scientific and technical ideas, which became embedded in the European civilization matrix. 
  • Using Inventing Europe:  
  • Teacher: Prof. dr. Maria Paula Diogo, New University of Lisbon, Portugal – mpd@fct.unl.pt

History of Technology

  • Course Description: This course for first year construction engineering students and third year architecture students focuses on modern times, with an emphasis on Poland, Europe, and the United States. Some main topics are: the flow of technological ideas through the iron curtain; development of industry in interwar Poland, the development of European railway networks; the protection and re-use of industrial heritage. 
  • Using Inventing Europe: Inventing Europe was demonstrated during the introductory lectures and was shown as an example of how the digital resources can be used in scholarship. As an assignment, students had to pick one story from IE and justify their choice; then they wrote one object story based on what they found in the IE partners’ collections or in Polish digital sources. At the end of the course they prepared a virtual tour in groups of 5-6 persons.
  • Teacher: Dr. Slawomir Lotysz, University of Zielona Gora, Poland –  s.lotysz@gmail.com

History of Technology and Engineering

  • Course Description: This course aims at providing students with a core of concepts which allow them to develop their own scientific and technical culture.  Our purpose is to lead students to think about their future work as engineers and ask themselves crucial questions such as “what is technology?”, “does technology drive (European) History?” “is there a social responsibility/ethics in the work of the engineer/technologist?” Bearing these questions in mind a set of significant moments in the European history is selected. Machine and technical systems are the starting point of the analysis of each topic; further on we analyse these material signs as both agents and products of social life.
  • Using Inventing Europe: The students explored the Inventing Europe website and wrote a short essay on a technical object in the virtual exhibit style, that is: a short historical context, a short state-of-the-art before the use of the object, the history of the object, and the consequences of its use.  
  • Teacher: Prof. dr. Maria Paula Diogo, New University of Lisbon, Portugal – mpd@fct.unl.pt

Poland’s Footprints in the League of Nations

Was the CMEA self-sufficient? Interdependence of East Central Europe from the world during the socialist integration (1949-1991)