University of Melbourne

This course examines big ideas in sociology that help to explain the key changes and challenges facing contemporary societies. It covers social change, power and conflict, inequality, identity, risk, individualization, and networks. 

This course examines surfing's history, culture, and science with a unique practical immersion. Students will uncover the multifaceted nature of surfing in Australia, which will include examining surfing’s Polynesian roots in the First Nations cultures, its development by the modern surfing industry, as well as delving into the science that shapes the perfect wave. Students will examine the distinct surfing culture which has emerged and is still evolving through Australian music, film and literature. Students will also examine the effects of large businesses such as Billabong and Rip Curl on Australia’s surfing culture. 

This course examines the science of what enables individuals to operate at the peak of their potential, including the conditions that are thought to give rise to optimal motivation, emotional agility, resilience, and other factors that support wellbeing and performance. It explores skills and pathways for cultivating wellbeing while giving consideration to relevant individual differences and cultural factors. The content draws on a variety of disciplines, including psychology, education, philosophy, sports science, and organizational science. It covers the historical and philosophical views of wellbeing, motivation, and performance; the paradigm shift from problem-focused to strengths-based approaches; and the evolution from individual- to system-level perspectives of what contributes to wellbeing. 

This course examines the deeply intertwined relationship between literature and the city. On the one hand, the rise of the modern metropolis saw the production of new literary modes as writers responded to changing social and economic relations, new opportunities for self-fashioning and cultural exchange, as well as experiences of exploitation, segregation and exclusion. On the other hand, the literary imagination itself has produced indelible urban worlds and underworlds, from James Joyce’s Dublin, Virginia Woolf’s London or Claude McKay’s Marseille, to novels, short strories and speculative fictions that reimagine Singapore, Melbourne or Johannesburg. Reading widely across twentieth- and twenty-first-century literary geographies, students will engage with different genres of city writing – poetry, short story, novel, and graphic novel -- as well as read theoretical texts that explore key concepts such as the production of space, the flaneur, space and gender, the imperial/colonial metropolis and the global city.

This course examines the utopian, dystopian, and ambivalent implications of artificial intelligence. Grounded in the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies, students will study how bodies, subjectivity, life, households, work, and the environment are being transformed by technoscience and artificial intelligence. It will investigate how artificial intelligence, and technoscience more broadly, blurs the boundaries between humans and machines to equip students with the knowledge and skills to critically analyze historical, social, ethical, economic, and philosophical implications of past, present, and emerging technologies. Topics may include cyborgs, biotechnologies, pharmaceuticals, cyberspace, surveillance, and technosolutionism.

This course examines the diverse world of microbes and discusses the roles they play not only in causing infectious disease but also in both creating and maintaining life as we know it. Various types of microbes and their basic life processes are described, with the focus mainly on bacteria and viruses. Cell biology principles and roles of organelles in protein trafficking will be discussed. Bacterial genetics and metabolism are explored, with the emphasis on how these areas determine observed behaviors and activities. The components of the immune system are outlined and their interactions and functions described. A central part of this course is outlining some of the strategies used by microbes to cause disease, and the counter strategies employed by the immune system to prevent disease. Other ways of controlling microbes, including antibiotics and vaccines are also discussed. The key roles played by microbes and the immune system in medical and biotechnological research is described. 

In this course students participate in an individual program of supervised research within the School of Biomedical Sciences, or elsewhere within the faculty, at a research institute or overseas institution in which the student contributes to the design of a research project, in consultation with a supervisor; conducts the research; and presents the findings of the project. The project may be self contained or form a component of a larger research program. 

This course examines basic individual and group processes, as they affect people in organizations. Major theories and models in key areas of organizational behavior will be examined; including group dynamics, motivation, ethics, culture, communication, conflict, power and change management. 

This course provides a hands-on study of directors' pre-visualization and mise-en-scene, the art of adaptation, experimental filmmaking, animation, writing the documentary and working with actors. 

This course examines conceptual, methodological, and ethical issues at the center of current debates in the field of cognitive neuroscience. It explores how brain-behavior relationships are identified and used to inform models of cognition; methods of measuring and influencing cerebral activity; the neural mechanisms underlying a wide range of mental processes, such as attention, perception, and memory; and the implications of advances in our knowledge of the brain for psychiatric and neurological populations and society at large.