English

This course covers issues involved in global environmental changes and introduces system thinking, which is used in natural and social sciences. The course covers the following topics: 

1: Global Change: Overview
2: System Diagram
3: Daisyworld
4: Global Energy Balance
5: The Atmospheric Circulation System
6: The Circulation of the Oceans
7: The Carbon Cycle
8: Long-Term Climate Regulation
9: Faint Young Sun Paradox, Early Earth
10: Short-Term Climate Variability
11: Global Warming and An Inconvenient Truth
12: Kepler and Milankovitch
13: Ozone Depletion

This course offers a thematic overview of the frontiers of physics, with a central focus on light due to its ubiquitous presence in the development of modern physics. It covers the classical wave description of light, from the history of its discovery to the basic mathematical notions, the speed of light and special relativity, as well as light's impact on the development of quantum theory, highlighting some fundamental quantum processes involving one or two photons. It also explores light-based technologies and considers the historical and philosophical context of these scientific concepts, laying a solid foundation for further study in physics.

This course studies art and architecture created in East Asia during the seminal period when Buddhism was introduced to China and then transmitted to Korea and Japan. Focusing on the period c.300-c.1500, it examines selected key sites and significant works in all three countries. Students become familiar with important figures in the Buddhist pantheon; the iconography, gestures, and postures associated with Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and other deities; and popular narratives and architectural features associated with early Buddhist practice. These visual and iconographic features are studied in their historical, political, economic, and social contexts.

The ability to communicate with confidence and impact can have a significant influence on our success in every aspect of our lives: our study, our relationships and our career. The course starts from the belief that we all have a unique ability to communicate with confidence and that this ability is not innate but rather, a skill which can be developed and learnt. Drawing on theories from biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and techniques from the world of theatre and acting, the course will support participants in learning how to manage nerves, communicate effectively and to engage with a wide variety of audiences, so that you can feel confident in any situation. The course is an interactive and practical one, and participants learn through active engagement, as well as through group and individual, tuition. In addition, the learning process will be tailored to the needs and experience of the participants.

The course introduces a range of key issues, concepts, principles and methods in environmental management. The major components, processes, and attributes to environmental management are also covered. The roles of civil society, market mechanism and government regulations in environmental management are examined. Real-life examples from Hong Kong, China, and overseas countries are discussed to illustrate how integrated approaches should be applied for identifying optimal options in environmental management decision-making processes. 

The course introduces students to British & Irish film and television through the study of a selection of examples and topics. These might cover specific periods, styles and traditions, themes, stars, filmmakers and television providers, among others. Through this approach, students are introduced to some of the ways in which British and Irish identities and cultures are represented and constructed on screen.

This course focuses on disaster risk as the key element of environmental risk, elaborating with case studies on different innovation examples in the field of housing, health, water, education and disaster recovery. It features examples from developing countries in Asia. 

This course is an introductory study of contemporary organizations and their management. It explores the types of purposes of organizations, their stakeholders and changing environments together with their key managerial processes – entrepreneurship, organizational structure, leading, strategic planning and change. The focus throughout is on helping students achieve a critical and reflective approach, and learning to apply relevant concepts, tools, and models. The coursework component of assessment requires students to choose an organization that is of interest to them and to explore, critically, the way in which it handles a process of students' choice. 

Beyond the idea that revolutions are the driving forces of social and political transformation, this course examines revolutions in their historical time as well as across history from the perspective of political anthropology. It uses the concepts of liminality, social dramas, crowd behavior, imitation, tricksters, and meaning formation. These concepts disentangle the study of revolutions from structures and the search for causes and outcomes, as well as from ideology, culture, and agency, opening them to a comparative analysis at the level of process, form, and symbolism. After a theoretical introduction, the course turns its focus on historical experiences of the major socio-political revolutions of the modern era: the "big three" revolutions (French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions); the "third world" (Mexico, Cuba) to eastern Europe in 1989; from Iran (1978-1979) to the Arab Spring (2011). The course concludes by looking back at the main themes covered by the class and examining the prospect for revolutionary change in the contemporary world, thus considering whether the concept of revolution should be consigned, or not, to the "dustbin of history." Students are encouraged to develop comparisons across time and space.