English

This course introduces the science of strategic decision-making. Students learn to identify the key elements of any strategic situation: who the players are, what actions they can take, what information they have, and how they value different outcomes. Building on these foundations, students explore core concepts such as Nash equilibrium, the power of commitment, and the principles of effective mechanism design, all with minimal mathematical prerequisites but strong emphasis on conceptual insight.

The course moves from basic models to more sophisticated scenarios, each grounded in real-world applications. It examines how telecoms spectrum auctions raised billions, why Brexit negotiations unfolded as they did, how matching algorithms assign doctors to hospitals and support kidney exchanges, and how AI agents learn to interact strategically. Course outcomes include thinking more clearly and systematically about strategic situations in any context: equipping students with frameworks that are valuable across economics, business, politics, and technology.

In this course, students examine how institutions, including structures of governance, bureaucracies and political parties, adapt to changing circumstances. Students explore how they respond to demands from interest groups while dealing with the ongoing pressures of social and economic development in India. The course is divided into two main parts. Part one covers India’s political history and independence, with a focus on analyzing the institutional mechanisms of governance. Students investigate the design of the Indian constitution, including its key features such as federalism, secularism, and political and electoral system. Part two explores the main instruments of governance in India: legislatures, bureaucracy, judiciary, army, and election commission. The course considers how these institutions operate in a complex political and social environment, focusing on relationships between politics and economy, politics and society, and politics and conflict. 

This is a Public International law and European Union law course for political science students. It focuses on the legal structures underpinning international relations, covering selected topics to provide the basic concepts for understanding the nature and function of International Law and EU Law. Students will deepen their understanding of the complex legal framework governing international and European affairs, shaping contemporary international politics and global governance. The course covers: the making and sources of International Law; subjects of International Law; responsibility in International Law; settlement of disputes and enforcement of International law: the return of sovereignism and use of force; the crisis of post-Second World War international law: the restoration of aggressive use of force in territorial disputes; the EU as a supranational organisation; the EU as an autonomous legal order; the impact of EU law and International Law in domestic systems; the law of the internal market: the fundamental freedoms; the crisis of the rule of law and supranational cooperation in Europe. Written midterm, final exam, group project.

This course examines the place and significance of sport in Australia as a form of social education. It looks at both historical and contemporary issues related to the growing tensions between sport’s traditional role as a form of moral education and the emergence of sport as a commercial commodity. It explores the changing definitions of sport and the purpose sport serves in contemporary society. This analysis of sport education and community sport is informed by an investigation of the growing role and responsibilities of the media in shaping sports. It will include topics such as elite sport versus sport for all, health and participation rates, social welfare, gender, violence, race and ethnicity. It will focus on current events in sport and how these issues impact on teaching and learning.

This course provides an in-depth introduction to some core topics in modern development economics. The course is divided into two halves. The first half, taught by Dr. Liang Bai, covers more of the macro literature, discussing the roles of institutions, history, international trade, as well as religion and culture in shaping the economic outcomes of different countries. The second half, taught by Dr. Dimitrios Minos, focuses more on the micro literature, discussing the roles of health, education, gender, as well as migration and remittances in shaping the economic outcomes of different individuals/households. 

The course is an intermediate finance course that builds upon students' existing knowledge to explore fundamental financial theories underpinning crucial corporate finance decisions. Students address pivotal financial questions such as: How should your business raise capital, and for what purpose? Should capital be sourced through debt or equity investors, and how much debt is optimal? What returns must you generate for your shareholders, and should dividends be distributed? Is it preferable to purchase assets or lease them? What are your business’s short-term cash flow requirements, and how will these needs be financed? These essential questions regularly confront business leaders worldwide. Throughout this ten-week course, students will discover that while some solutions emerge clearly from established financial theories, others rely heavily on strategic judgment due to inherent business uncertainties. 

How has prose fiction from approximately the mid 1990s onward (roughly the era after the decline of postmodernism and the rise of online media) held our fears, loathing's, and compulsions up to the light and changed our ways of thinking about them? This period of unprecedented online access has resuscitated the author, so this course reads essays, interviews, opinion pieces, and life writing by the fictionalists concerned, alongside the journalism and scholarship of others. The novels (including excerpts from very long works) and short fiction have been published, some in experimental online formats, across anglophone literary cultures. Assumed previous knowledge includes deep and wide reading of English-language literature, in particular contemporary fiction, and literary theory. Previous knowledge can be gained by The Writers' Lab; A New Dawn: Renaissance Literature 1400-1700; The Making of Modernity: Literature in English 1660-1850; Brave New Worlds: Literature in English 1850-1950; Race, Empire, and Gothic in the Literature of the Athropocene; Life, Love and Politics in Medieval Literature; Shakespeare's Work and Worlds; Literary Toolbox.

This course introduces ongoing debates on human rights by returning to their philosophical sources, in particular theories of natural law and their long intellectual history. Why were natural law theories the original source of the idea of human rights? Why did they
cease to be the dominant theoretical framework from the nineteenth century onward? What replaced them? Can human rights be conceived without reference to natural law? Do human rights retain their validity if one abandons the idea of a universal human nature? The course is structured around three methodological choices. First, it is situated at the interface of philosophy, legal theory, and legal history. Second, it adopts a long-term historical perspective, ranging from ancient philosophy through the Middle Ages to contemporary theories. Third, it sheds light on present-day debates concerning human rights.

 

The course starts in Ancient China at the time of the Warring States Period. Several schools of thought flourished during these 250 years: Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism or Legalism. Next, the course takes students to south Asia, at the beginning of Buddhism. Buddhist ethics promotes a deep-rooted work on human behavior through ethical conduct, meditation and perception of the world. Walking in the Spaniards’ footsteps, students witness the "Destruction of the Indies" through war, genocide, enslavement and colonization. The course ends in Africa where post-colonial philosophers ask fundamental questions about the definition and purpose of philosophy. Students then focus on the work of Nkiru Nzegwu; she argues that the feminist movement is a Western construct that may adequately identify and address the issues of women in the West, but that is not adapted to the status and role of women in a society such as the Igbo one.

This course examines five novels by Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. Each novel will provide a starting point from which we will explore the representation of broad themes of historical and literary significance relating to late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain. We will examine the ways in which knowledge of the period in which Austen wrote enriches our understanding of her fiction and how the novels in turn participate in certain crucial debates and developments of the period. Topics to be covered will include the representation within the novels of the following: the Navy, marriage and adultery, fashion and consumption, slavery and empire, the landed estate, Bath, the concept of 'improvement', the female reading public and its institutions, leisure, the Gothic, ideas of the family and domesticity, music, the theatre, female friendship, philanthropy and science. We will also critically examine the significance of the Austen 'craze' with reference to film and television versions of the novels as well as Austen's presence on the internet.