English

How has over 300 years of colonialism left its mark on Britain? Whilst some scholars assert that the British were indifferent to empire – that empire was acquired in a “fit of absence of mind” (JR Seeley) – others point to the many traces of empire left in British society and culture to this day. This course analyses these effects and legacies by focusing on the artefacts of empire. Empire seems to be everywhere across British history: in consumer goods and fashion, the built environment and the domestic interior, advertising, visual media and museums, as well as institutions such as the monarchy and the BBC. But is this culture of empire, or simply a random mix of influences from around the world? To what extent is this material culture mediated by narratives of colonial power and racial superiority? This course considers the conquest of Ireland in the 16th and 17th centuries and the onset of slavery in the Caribbean, then looks at the colonization of North America and parts of the Pacific, before moving through the British Raj in India and onto the colonial conquests of Africa and the Middle East, finishing with the end of empire after 1945 and the imperial nostalgia that feeds Brexit. Throughout the course the focus is on cultural objects, their context, and their interpretation.

This course explores the main approaches to the interdisciplinary study of gender and provides grounding to major feminist debates in the field. It examines the development of feminist social and political thought from the 1960s onwards and relates theory to "real life" issues and debates. Topics include gender and power, feminist debates on equality and difference, masculinities in the military, gender and technology, feminism and multiculturalism, and post-feminism. 

The course provides a deepened overview of macroeconomic theory. The content of the course mainly focuses on business cycle fluctuations, unemployment, inflation, the current account, and fiscal and monetary policy. The analysis is extended to include the fact that economic agents are forward-looking, which considerably deepens the insights into the determination and development of a country’s consumption, investment, current account, and economic policy. In addition, the course contains the IS–LM model that is important for analysis of economic policy.

This course provides an opportunity to rediscover one of the classic fields of anthropology, economic anthropology. It explores both classic and contemporary economic culture and allows for experimental use of economic anthropology in analysis of the student’s own empirical data, planned fieldwork, or theoretical discussions. The course explores issues such as forms of value, work, consumption, distribution and welfare society, spheres of exchange, spirits of capitalism, financialization, precarization, market fantasies, and economic cosmologies. The course consists of lectures, group discussions, presentations, and feedback sessions where students read and comment on each other’s writing.

Using contemporary texts, this course explores recent issues in philosophy of language. Topics include context and indexicality, indefinites and definites, quantifiers, modality and tense, or the relationships among singular propositions, singular thoughts, and singular terms. 

This course provides students with a general understanding of the different functions performed by financial markets and institutions and their role in the economic system. The course begins with a brief overview of the functions of the financial system and its connections to the real economy. The course then studies the functioning of financial markets and the main financial instruments. Finally, the course studies the economics of different types of financial institutions. The first part of the course analyzes in detail the characteristics of the major financial assets, and describes the institutional characteristics of the markets in which these assets are traded. The second part of the course studies in detail the objectives as well as the organization of the major financial intermediaries (commercial banks, investment banks, mutual funds) that allow to match demand and supply of funds when securities markets do not function perfectly. The course recommends students have background knowledge in Mathematics (applied), Management, Accounting, and Financial Statement Analysis as a prerequisite.

Using ethnography from Asia, Africa, USA, Latin America, and Europe, you will examine globalization from the perspective of global elites, the middle classes, and the poor. By engaging with real-world scenarios students unpack the effect of globalization on social and cultural identities, family life, social mobility, and political movements.