An overview of flavour physics and CP-violating phenomena is presented. The Standard Model quark-mixing mechanism is discussed in detail and its many successful experimental tests are summarized. Flavour-changing transitions put very stringent constraints on new-physics scenarios beyond the Standard Model framework. Special attention is given to the empirical evidences of CP violation and their important role in our understanding of flavour dynamics.The current status of the so-called flavour anomalies is also reviewed.

These lecture notes briefly describe the current and planned experimental facilities for high-energy physics research in Latin America. The list is not exhaustive nor the descriptions are complete, but I tried to select some of the most representative facilities and large international experiments at the time. Given that particle physics today is tightly related to cosmology and astrophysics, and South America is where most of the major astronomical observatories in the world are located, I start by listing some of the representative observatories. Then we move on to the main accelerator facilities, which are few and mainly for applications, but the core of particle physics research infrastructure in Latin America is in astroparticle physics, which is where I take most of the time to describe. The name and location of each infrastructure are listed, the scientific goals and some introductory description of the detecting techniques. Specific details are not included, which can be found in the literature.

In these two lectures I review the basics of heavy-ion collisions at relativistic energies and the physics we can do with them. I aim to cover the basics on the kinematics and observables in heavy-ion collider experiments, the basics on the phenomenology of the nuclear matter phase diagram, some of the model building and simulations currently used in the heavy-ion physics community and a selected list of amazing phenomenological discoveries and predictions.