English

This course introduces students to descriptive English grammar and to central themes relating to sound patterns and pronunciation in English. The first part of the module, which focuses on grammar, provides you with an understanding of the way in which phrases and sentences are constructed and equips students with the skills to break sentences down into their constituent parts, to describe the category and grammatical function of those parts, to distinguish clause types, to distinguish the parts of the English verb group, to construct and test hypotheses and to represent sentence structure by means of tree diagrams. The second part of the course focuses on phonetics and phonology. Students acquire knowledge and understanding of the production of sounds and the skills necessary to describe, define, and transcribe consonants and vowels using the International Phonetic Alphabet. Students are also introduced to fundamental concepts related to contrast and meaning in sound structures and to fundamental concepts in phonology that go beyond the description of individual sounds, such as syllable structure, stress, and phonological processes and the relationship between pronunciation and spelling.

Medicine is so pervasive in the modern Western world it seems difficult sometimes to understand what it is. This course explores the complex ways medicine is shaped by, and in turn, shapes us and the world we live in; whether medicine can be conceived as a system of knowledge, a form of power or an example of professional practice. The course focuses on some of the core theoretical insights that have emerged from the sociological studies of medicine, health, disease, and illness and is divided into two sections. In the first part, students look at the nature of medical professions, the relationships between clinicians and patients, biomedical power and knowledge, the rise of information communication and technology, empowered patient subjectivity and patient activism. In the second half of the course, students discuss the rise and status of public health (including some reflections on the social consequences of the coronavirus) and key contemporary issues in biomedicine (such as geneticization, pharmaceuticalization and cyborgization). We discuss the social and ethical consequences of these new medical (bio)technologies that may go 'beyond therapy' to enhancement. The question that runs throughout the course is whether, there is occurring a wider transformation from medicalization to biomedicalization that has changed what medicine was.

The Great Hunger or An Gorta Mór (1845-52) was the single most transformative event in modern Irish history and proportionally one of the most devastating famines to occur anywhere in the modern era. This famine led to the loss of one million lives and the emigration of two million refugees from a population of eight and a half million. The humanitarian crisis of the late-1840s and early-1850s marks the creation of a global Irish diaspora and a lasting memory of social change. This course explores key debates surrounding the famine and its resonances across Irish and global history, tackling topics including the role of government relief, epidemic disease, mass displacement, and the social revolution which fundamentally reshaped Ireland.

This course discusses some of the underlying issues which are causing large environmental challenges on the continent of Africa, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Topics include the concept of nature as imagined in the 21st century; the "commons" and property rights, and how differing views of those in Africa have given rise to different problems; and the political economy of conservation, the connection of sustainability, and inequality of renewal.