Study Abroad | Grenoble
Fall 2025: Academics

Course Code: FR/ECON 410

Instruction Language: French

The aim of this course is to situate, characterize and critique the main approaches in economics concerned with understanding the mechanisms of coordination, regulation and governance – in other words, collective action. By questioning fundamental categories in economics (market, money, actor, state, firm, etc.), it aims to provide theoretical and conceptual tools to shed light on a number of contemporary controversies, and to facilitate dialogue between economics and other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Choice of final exam in English OR French (in January)

Course Code: Econ/PolSci 315

Instruction Language: English

Drawing on a rich literature in political economy, this course explores the relationship between money and politics, with a particular focus on contemporary European democracies. To what extent is wealth associated with influence in European countries? What are the main channels through which money brings power? What are the possible ways to limit the power of money and restore equal democratic representation?

Course Code: French 301

Instruction Language: French

This course aims at developing the various themes and fields studied at Sciences Po through group and individual assignments and presentions designed to improve French language skills and develop confidence in academic and daily life (expression, comprehension, grammar, vocabulary).

Course Code: French 401

Instruction Language: French

This course aims at developing the various themes and fields studied at Sciences Po through group and individual assignments and presentions designed to improve French language skills and develop confidence in academic and daily life (expression, comprehension, grammar, vocabulary)

Course Code: French 101

Instruction Language: French

Students learn to introduce themselves, speak about themselves, manage daily situations in French, and understand the principle traits of French culture. Emphasis is on grammar, conversation and written expression.

Course Code: French 102

Instruction Language: French

The course develops linguistic knowledge (grammar, vocabularly, expression, comprehension) through the use of authentic materials and enables students to learn to interact in a French academic environment while also discovering French culture.

Course Code: French 201

Instruction Language: French

This course has an interactive and action based approach to learning French with emphasis on linguistic ability (grammar, vocabulary, expression, comprehension) combined with the discovery of French culture, history and academic life.

Course Code: IntRel 315/317

Instruction Language: English

This class introduces students to the main questions raised in the field of foreign and security policy by our contemporary multipolar world with a focus on understanding the major debates and challenges on international security issues and the players involved. The class structure uses a multi-faceted approach combining international relations, political science and international public law including theory and case studies.

Course Code: CrimJust 320/322

Instruction Language: English

A general course in ëpunishment and societyí studies, which discusses large-scale issues (penal paradigms, historical developments in crime control, explanations for the variation of punishment in time and space), different sorts of crime (from homicides to burglaries and drug trafficking, sex work, domestic violence and employee theft), and crime control policies (policing, prisons, situational crime prevention). The course will discuss theories, concepts and controversies with an emphasis on existing policies and empirical data.

Course Code: Fr/IntRel 404

Instruction Language: French

This specialized course offers a three-part seminar that brings theory and practice face to face. The first part of the seminar is devoted to studying the construction of the French framework for the AEICT. Once this general framework has been established, the remainder of the seminar will be led by two professionals in the field of international relations for local authorities, with a view to understanding the contemporary issues at stake in the development of the AEICT, the internationalization of territories at work, and the interactions between public policies. The course will analyze the interests at stake and the players involved, to decipher how projects are implemented, and to provide a glimpse of existing career opportunities. Role-playing exercises will help to decipher the relationships between elected representatives and technicians, local authorities and associations, and between different regions of the world.

Course Code: PolSci 307

Instruction Language: English

After recalling the core hypothesis of mainstream international theories (realism, liberalism, transnationalism, constructivism), this course aims to underline the dynamics of change in contemporary global politics by raising the following questions: what is the nature of state power in an era of globalization? Is sovereignty an obsolete or a resilient norm? How has diplomacy evolved over time? What are the functions of the international organizations? How has war been transformed from the 20th century World Wars to contemporary armed conflicts? Can we judge the legitimacy of armed violence according to the “just war doctrine”? What is the record of half a century of UN peacekeeping? Are international sanctions a new way of managing conflicts? What is the specificity of global terrorism as a form of political violence? Is the danger of nuclear proliferation under control? Can the international community protect human rights? How does international criminal justice work? How are international migrations regulated? How are environmental challenges managed by the international community?

Course Code: PolSci 312

Instruction Language: English

This course covers twelve central topics in comparative political economy and the many questions they raise. The course studies political institutions but analyzes them with tools borrowed from economics in order to understand how institutions affect individual behavior and produce specific outcomes. From a methodological perspective, knowledge about the origins and effects of political institutions is drawn from statistical analysis or from experiments.

Course Code: PolSci 306

Instruction Language: English

This course explores some key issues in Middle East politics nowadays. It deals mainly with the Machreq states including the two regional superpowers Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The thematic organization of the course intends to open several debates on today’s issues at stake in the Middle East region. Discussion of historical reasons for the political situation in the Middle East (Gaza, Lebanon, Syria) including ethic identity, the rise of violence, the question of refugees, modes of governance, etc. REQUIRED ELECTIVE: choose one of four offered

Course Code: Env/IntRel 318

Instruction Language: English

This course analyzes the relationships between natural resource dependency, environmental degradation, and armed violence. It is divided into several parts: non-renewable natural resources and arising conflicts; to what extent resource scarcity and environmental degradation increase the risk of intrastate armed conflict; discussion of theories that seek to explain why extreme weather events such as droughts or cold waves are often associated with political violence; explores the possibility of interstate disputes around water and oil and the environmental consequences of armed conflicts, and explores the various pathways linking warfare to environmental degradation.

Course Code: Sociology 310

Instruction Language: English

The course aims to give the students a better knowledge of France’s History, Politics and Society.This course will focus on France, a key EU Member State, especially underlining and questioning the specificity of this country in Europe and in the world, in terms of its contemporary history (revolutions and restorations, democracy, colonialism, Vichy period, Resistance, Algerian war, May 68), its secular state (laicism, republicanism, human rights), its political system (semi presidential system), its foreign policy (the tumultuous relations with the US, France’s “Arab” policy…) its territory (centralization, decentralization and new regional organization) and its society (literature, cinema…).

Course Code: Fr/Sociology 311

Instruction Language: French

The course aims to give the students a better knowledge of France’s History, Politics and Society.This course will focus on France, a key EU Member State, especially underlining and questioning the specificity of this country in Europe and in the world, in terms of its contemporary history (revolutions and restorations, democracy, colonialism, Vichy period, Resistance, Algerian war, May 68), its secular state (laicism, republicanism, human rights), its political system (semi presidential system), its foreign policy (the tumultuous relations with the US, France’s “Arab” policy…) its territory (centralization, decentralization and new regional organization) and its society (literature, cinema…).

Course Code: GenStu 310

Instruction Language: English

Today’s gender issues are numerous and varied and their political impact widespread. They lead to controversy in private and public contexts, and provide an intersectional concern through which social inequalities can be re-assessed. In this course, different angles will put forward the impact of gender on public policies as well as underline the hierarchy of masculine and feminine stereotyped representations and the impact of biological difference beliefs. The course will provide historical landmarks to help grasp the deconstruction of sex-differences and will show how the notion of gender pervades diverse social and political contexts: education, language policy, prisons, the professional world (private companies, the public sector), the media, art and culture.

Course Code: PolSci/Econ 315

Instruction Language: English

In 2013, cyber warfare (and thus economic espionage) was placed at the forefront of US security threats by the US administration, faced with the risk of terrorism. This testifies to the multiplicity of the current stakes of international security, which must no longer be considered solely from the political and military point of view, as in the Cold War era. The economy is now at the heart of security issues. National security requires the protection of strategic technologies, the securing of raw material supplies, economic counter-espionage, and so on. Many past and contemporary conflicts can be analyzed from an economic point of view. In a global economy where defence budgets have been on the increase (excluding Europe) since the late 1990s, the economy is at the centre of security issues.

Course Code: PolSci 316

Instruction Language: English

Political geography is focused on power practices, on how spatial issues are defined and on the geopolitical concepts that can be applied to various places/spaces. To grasp the key questions of geopolitics today the course will examine the emergence of geopolitics and its controversial origins due to its link with totalitarian regimes. It will assess how the “neutral” posture adopted by geopoliticians de-politicized the discipline and undermined its credibility. The course will look at different institutions and stakeholders, like the state, borders, private companies and criminal organizations that have a changing weight on the relationship between power and territory. A geographical understanding of political issues is therefore at the heart of this lecture. Three case studies are discussed.

Course Code: PolSci 410

Instruction Language: English

This course aims at understanding the current globalization processes through the emergence, spreading and management of borders. By providing students with some of the theoretical tools to consider several issues at the heart of the current world balance, through targeted readings and weekly debates, the course will discuss historical elements related to the emergence of today’s bordered state system, the development of border studies as a sub-field of cross-disciplinary domains, the globalization process which includes key notions like migrations, border crossings and integrated border management, including the growing incidence of border walling as an apparent contradiction to the globalization process. REQUIRED ELECTIVE: choose one of four offered

Course Code: PolSci 320

Instruction Language: English

Course description coming soon.

Course Code: Fr/PolSci 410

Instruction Language: French

This course enables us to understand public action as a fundamental component of political power, and therefore of change in contemporary states. Part of the trilogy that defines political science – polity (the political system and its rules), politics (the political game and its elections) – public policies refer more generally to what the state does in society, and under what conditions. Exam in January

Course Code: Fr/Cult 410

Instruction Language: French

The action of the public authorities in the field of cultural affairs is often seen as a project to bring together the greatest number of people in the knowledge and admiration of both the common historical heritage and contemporary creation. It can also appear as a cultural form of the Welfare State that would propose to broaden access to cultural works and services in a global perspective of equalization of conditions. The purpose of this course is to distance this ideology from cultural policies. On the contrary, it will show that in this field, as in other sectors of public policy, the action of the public authorities is the product of interactions between actors and social groups. The history and analysis of the contemporary period show that this field of intervention is a space of powerful material and symbolic struggles. The observable changes are not only the result of an evolution of ideas but also the result of power relations between groups with differentiated visions of the role of public authorities with regard to cultural issues. Examples from different artistic sectors (museums, music, cinema, books, major institutions, etc.) will be examined throughout the course, as well as issues related to cultural and artistic education and cultural professions.

Course Code: Fr/Soc 410

Instruction Language: French

The aim of this course is to approach the study of contemporary sociology through theoretical questioning of research traditions, concepts and methods that are the subject of discussion in the discipline as it is practiced today. The aim of this course is both to describe the changes taking place in contemporary societies, and to examine the tensions that these changes provoke in the discipline of sociology. During class, we will interrogate these tensions as an exercise in "sociological imagination": a reflection on the tools by which we can all try to understand the social world in which we live and – by doing so – act upon it.

Course Code: IntRel 318

Instruction Language: French

This course is about the study of UCP, a coordinated set of actions by unarmed professionals aiming at keeping or building peace and/or protecting civilians. UCP is generally seen as the acronym for Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping or Unarmed Civilian Protection, sometimes for Unarmed Civilian Peacebuilding. The diversity of Institutional UCP actors will be described and the course will focus on the core methods shared by the main NGOs and IGOs doing UCPs. The evolution of UCP over the past 100 years will be briefly studied. The course will compare armed and unarmed peacekeeping, in terms of history, principles, achievements, risks and failures.

Course Code: SocSci 304

Instruction Language: English

This course will analyze ideas about the responsibility of science toward society. It will provide a critical examination of how policymakers, scientists, and citizens, make science accountable to society and try to increase its social relevance. The course is open to any student with an interest in science and improving its benefits, who wishes to understand the difficulties in assessing its societal impacts and to students who are interested in the role that they can play as citizens in promoting socially responsible research even in scientific areas in which they don’t have technical expertise.

Course Code: Fr/Soc 420

Instruction Language: French

Political sociology is a sub-discipline of political science that examines the relationship between the governed and the governors in modern political systems. Among the main topics covered in the course are political behavior, political and administrative elites, social movements, interest groups, public opinion and opinion polls. At the end of the course, students are expected to have the ability to compare points of view and to base positions on the findings of scientific debates, by mobilizing precise references to authors, concepts and theories and the ability to participate in oral exchanges of arguments, by listening to others, leading debates, working in teams, all the while being critical, constructive and creative. Exam in January.