It’s hard to imagine long-lasting manned space missions without personalized healthcare provided onboard, and it is hard to imagine modern space healthcare without engineering and technology. In this course students will get an overview of current trends and challenges in medical technology for space. The course focuses on the technologies which are currently in use and on technologies which might make long-term space-flights possible in the near future. All the aspects are presented both in a general and a specific manner through several practical scenarios.

​​This is a multidisciplinary course. Students will explore the world of Space, while improving their professional English for their future studies and employment opportunities. Participants will also understand terminologies and concepts for fields relevant to the space sector as part of the UNIVERSEH programme (e.g. "space, earth, natural sciences, medicine, humanities") and contribute to the development of an illustrated Dictionary of Space Concepts that we are developing in cooperation with the Computer Linguistics Dept. There will be many opportunities to practice different text styles, such as interviewing, biographical notes, reports, and reflection writing. As an online course, digital media are endemic to the classroom environment, and the synchronous meetings will be supplemented with asynchronous tasks that will help students prepare for class and apply their newly acquired knowledge and skills. Continuous cooperation, peer review, video creation, and illustrations for the DSC, will result in a tangible product at the end of the term.

​​This is a multidisciplinary course. Students will explore the world of Space, while improving their professional English for their future studies and employment opportunities. Participants will also understand terminologies and concepts for fields relevant to the space sector as part of the UNIVERSEH programme (e.g. "space, earth, natural sciences, medicine, humanities") and contribute to the development of an illustrated Dictionary of Space Concepts that we are developing in cooperation with the Computer Linguistics Dept. There will be many opportunities to practice different text styles, such as interviewing, biographical notes, reports, and reflection writing. As an online course, digital media are endemic to the classroom environment, and the synchronous meetings will be supplemented with asynchronous tasks that will help students prepare for class and apply their newly acquired knowledge and skills. Continuous cooperation, peer review, video creation, and illustrations for the DSC, will result in a tangible product at the end of the term.

Our course “Critical Outer Space Studies: Seminar and Lecture Series” takes as its cue the increasing prevalence and visibility of both public (NASA, ESA, Artemis Accords) and private (SpaceX Blue Origins, etc.) endeavors that seek to explore, exploit, settle, and own outer space and its celestial bodies. Our course will pay particular attention to how, in recent years, the exploration of outer space has been invigorated via its role as a potential remedy for the challenges of the Anthropocene (via resource extractivism, resettlement, off-world heavy industry, observation of impacts of climate change on a global scale).

Using as a point of departure the notion that outer space is a social construct and as such entangled in terrestrial discourses such as colonialism, capitalism, territoriality, militourism, (among others), this class will engage the complex field of study that is the science and exploration of outer space through a variety of disciplinary lenses—particularly, but not exclusively, from the humanities—such as environmentalism, posthuman studies, mobility studies, astroethics, critical legal studies, discard studies, and postcolonial studies.

Participating students will have the unique opportunity to engage with the work of leading scholars and scientists in all of these fields through seminar sessions and their discussion of texts, films, reports and other material. The seminars will also prepare the accompanying guest lecture series, which allow the students to directly engage with leading scholars and scientists from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to explore the ethics and cultural discourses that surround the exploration of human space.

The course curriculum includes two field trips to HHU Düsseldorf and Université Toulouse -Jean Jaurès for the first and final sessions of class, respectively, which will be fully funded for enrolled students.

The language focus of this trilingual course will be decided at the beginning of the course and depends on the course participants. It will be co-taught by French and English native speakers, who are multilingual language teachers and fluent in German. We will include activities that develop the reading comprehension and speaking in particular. The topics we will explore are all space related (cooperation vs. space race, demographics of the space industry, space and sustainability, environmental aspects, innovation...). Participants will thus familiarise themselves with a transdisciplinary approach by dealing with themes that hardly ever appear within their respective curricula. Unlike a traditional language course, this course does not focus on the systematic acquisition of grammar but aims to highlight the parallels that can exist between different languages in order to improve the participants' language learning strategies and foster the emergence of a translanguaging awareness.

The language focus of this trilingual course will be decided at the beginning of the course and depends on the course participants. It will be co-taught by French and English native speakers, who are multilingual language teachers and fluent in German. We will include activities that develop the reading comprehension and speaking in particular. The topics we will explore are all space related (cooperation vs. space race, demographics of the space industry, space and sustainability, environmental aspects, innovation...). Participants will thus familiarise themselves with a transdisciplinary approach by dealing with themes that hardly ever appear within their respective curricula. Unlike a traditional language course, this course does not focus on the systematic acquisition of grammar but aims to highlight the parallels that can exist between different languages in order to improve the participants' language learning strategies and foster the emergence of a translanguaging awareness.

The UNIVERSEH course "Mankind and the Moon. Mining 300 years of Space Exploration" explores the cultural history of space travel and more generally the moon as a cultural reference point in Early Modern, Modern and Contemporary History. Students will explore this topic based on digitised Early Modern Encyclopedias as well as Modern and Contemporary newspaper collections. Alongside lectures on the topic, student-led teams will design small-scale research projects and employ fundamental techniques for the semantic enrichment and data-driven exploration of their sources. In addition, students will explore novel techniques for content presentation in virtual worlds in collaboration with students of the BA Animation Studies at the University of Luxembourg.

The proposed seminar pursues a decidedly interdisciplinary approach, fostering collaboration across various fields to enable students to employ digital methods for the study and critical analysis of the multifaceted discourses of space exploration.

The seminar is structured into three main blocks, beginning with an introductory phase in Düsseldorf, where students receive theoretical grounding and hands-on training in using early modern encyclopaedias and digitised newspapers as historical sources. This phase emphasises the formation of interdisciplinary teams, leveraging complementary language skills to facilitate diverse research perspectives.

The second block consists of hybrid meetings featuring lectures on premodern voyages to the moon, space travel in the modern era, and digital humanities research methods. These sessions are complemented by practical training in digital tools such as Voyant Tools and the Impresso web app, enhancing students' skills in text analysis and digital research methodologies.

In the concluding block held in Luxembourg, students will finalise and present their projects in a virtual world based on the Unreal game engine, incorporating insights from lectures, digital humanities tools, and interdisciplinary collaboration. The seminar aims to equip students with a critical understanding of the cultural history of the moon and space travel, bolstered by project management skills including science communication, writing, and text analysis.

Overall, "Mankind and the Moon. Mining 300 years of Space Exploration" not only offers a critical introduction to cultural and digital history but also contributes to the establishment of a continuous class format for critical space studies. This innovative seminar framework encourages students to continually apply a critical lens to their (inter-)disciplinary training, promoting a holistic understanding of the cultural significance of the moon and space travel throughout history.

• Analysis of the narrative interplay between factual reporting and fictional storytelling in human-alien encounters.
• Exploration of the line between engaging science fiction and controversial conspiracy theories that shape public perceptions of space.
• Comparative study of how various space programs, both public and private, envision interactions with extraterrestrial cultures, referred to as exocultures.