English

This course equips students with the basic knowledge of contemporary economic thinking. It adheres closely to mainstream economics thinking, with particular attention to business applications. Students examine market equilibrium, competition, monopoly, price and non-price business strategies and the teaching methodology takes a fundamentally problem-solving approach. Models and analytical skills are introduced to solve business problems systematically and how information technology and the internet have made many changes in the way businesses are run.

Working with the local community, this course builds on the communication and leadership skills necessary to lead action for social change. This practical work is facilitated by the charity Citizens UK, who match students with local campaigns or voluntary organizations. Exploring issues that impact various communities, students find links between their discipline and ways in which ‘community work’ can be undertaken. In workshops, students  engage critically with current debates about social justice, analyze historical and contemporary campaigns, and build practical skills (storytelling, negotiation, and delivering leadership speeches) to make positive social change.

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the physics of semiconductors and devices. It covers essential topics including principles and design and the foundational knowledge of the functionality and applications of the devices. Students design experiments that use these devices, and link theory and practice so that concepts learned in the course can be implemented. Topics include widely used semiconductor devices, such as diode and transistor, or memory, such as, SRAM, DRAM, and NAND Flash. This course familiarizes students with the common semiconductor devices in the advanced manufacturing industry to gain the relevant background in the semiconductor industry. The course requires students to take prerequisites.

This course introduces students to important theoretical tools and conceptual frameworks developed in the social sciences. Students use these tools to uncover the economic, political, and other forces that shape the design process, explore how values and norms are built into technologies, track the effects of technologies on society, and use these insights to experiment with, and hopefully improve, design practices and outcomes. The goal is to enable social scientific reflection on and redirection of design practices at an early stage of technological production. The course focuses on important social scientific concepts, for example ‘network’ and ‘audience,’ each of which will be covered in two phases. First, students study and evaluate key social scientific ideas that explain the social dimensions of technological design through readings, class discussions, and written assignments. Second, students use those concepts to make experimental interventions, for example through archival research or fieldwork, video and image-based documentation, and creative experiments with design, in an effort to “design for a better world.”

This course explores the representation of love and romance in Hollywood, Bollywood, global art and European cinema. Romantic movies invariably revolve around the obstacles that the couple has to negotiate, overcome, or succumb to. Obstacles such as the social marginalization of the couple, death, jealously and rivalry, differences of class, race or ethnicity tend to be genre specific. The course juxtaposes and compares films and genres from different cultural contexts. Examples include melodramatic love stories, queer romance in European arthouse films, wedding films in global art cinema, interethnic romantic dramas and films about the end of love or the breakdown of marriage. 

The course introduces the concepts underpinning physiology and the major tissue types that form the structures of the body. Students examine the relationship between the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, learning how diseases of these systems can be interpreted in terms of altered physiology and anatomy.

The goal of this course is twofold. First, this course offers insights into the relationship between digital technologies and the city by engaging with ‘smart city,’ ‘surveillance,’ ‘big data,’ and a few other concepts. A range of case studies will be provided to demonstrate the agendas of various technologies, their effects on the material condition and organization of cities, and to evaluate the promises (and failures) of the “technological fix” with respect to social justice and equality. Second, this course introduces the opportunities of digital research in urban studies by offering hands-on experience in using basic Python and data analysis skills to extract and interpret data from social media platforms. Digital skills can be used toward dissertation research or projects at work. No prior knowledge is required.
 

This course provides students an understanding of physical and mental health conditions. It explores the relationships between physiology, physical health, lifestyle factors, and mental health and wellbeing. 

This course offers an interdisciplinary exploration of visual culture, bridging visual studies, communication, media, and cultural studies to understand how images and the act of looking carry meaning across everyday life. The curriculum covers a wide range of topics, including the power and politics of images, the role of viewers in making meaning, modern and postmodern theories of spectatorship and the gaze, the impact of visual technologies, media and brand cultures, as well as globalization and contemporary digital practices. Student engage with critical theories and methods to analyze artworks and visual media, while addressing social, psychological, and economic implications of visual representation. It course covers a range of themes such as representation, expression, form, style, Formalism, Iconography, Marxism, Gender etc. Using modern and contemporary Chinese art as examples, the course equips students with transferable and analytic skills, knowledge of modern and contemporary Chinese art, aesthetic sensibility, and theoretical literacy, encouraging them to apply these methods and knowledge to the study of visual art.

This course addresses issues of nationhood and identity in British and Irish writing since the 1920s, including recent works by postcolonial writers. The content ranges across a wide geographical area and covers a broad spectrum of literary styles, themes and narrative voices. While the primary focus is on selected works of fiction and poetry, the course also examines key concepts in literary and cultural theory. Authors discussed include Sebastian Barry, Mohsin Hamid, Nikita Lalwani, Andrea Levy, Sam Selvon, Kamila Shamsie, and Irvine Welsh.