University of Bristol

This course provides students with an understanding of the basic concepts used in the preparation of financial information and will introduce them to the forms of financial statements that managers need to be familiar with. In addition, the course introduces students to appropriate forms of finance and the means of raising money to fund enterprises, the financial planning this entails, and forms of feedback and accountability to actual and potential fund providers.

Students taking this course learn about the history, theory, and practice of decolonization. This includes a critical look at decolonization versus decolonial thinking in practice, including the institutionalization of calls to ‘decolonize’ which seek finalized end points rather than ongoing modes of decolonial critique. Students undertake specialized study through examples and case studies which may include topics such as decolonizing history, heritage, public history and museums, decolonizing universities, curricula and education, decolonizing environmental activism, art and art history, literature and public spaces.

This course explores one or more key issues in Value Theory through the close reading of two or more central works by key historical thinkers in the area and by the critical analysis of the ideas and arguments these works present. The course also introduces students to some of the key secondary literature on the relevant texts and consider how the ideas presented in these texts relate to each other and to issues in the modern philosophical debate.

The course offers an historical overview of the development of post-classical sociological theory such as functionalism, interactionism, and postmodernism, via an exploration of the work of a selection of key sociological theorists such as Talcott Parsons, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Jurgen Habermas, Judith Butler, Ulrich Beck, and Manuel Castells. Key concepts developed by these thinkers are explored in relation to the themes of structure and agency, culture/ideology, and sociological understanding.

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to analytic political theory from the 1970s to the present day, with a focus on leading liberal theorists and their critics. It does so via a discussion of normative theorising around key topics and themes, and shows how these theories bear on various applied questions. 

The course lays foundations in performance studies, introducing key concepts, theories and approaches. These are supplemented by seminars to focus on critical and textual analysis and small group tutorials. Students are introduced to a range of performance forms and methods of analysis. 

This course provides students with a grounding in classical and cutting-edge interdisciplinary social scientific theories of work and empirical developments in the study of how people and organizations relate. It helps students develop a strong set of critical analytical and conceptual frameworks and applies them to a series of contemporary issues in the organization of work, labor markets, and economic life. Critical social theories are used as a means by which commonplace understandings of work can be unpicked and unpacked to better capture and represent the experience of changing workplaces and careers. Applying different theoretical and conceptual frameworks in different empirical contexts, the course focuses specifically on the varied range of forms and locations in which work takes place, including work inside and outside the home, the gig economy, health and social care, the digital economy, migrant labor, and unemployment as they are experienced in social-psychological terms across lines of class, ethnicity, age, and gender.

Understanding consumption and consumer behavior is an essential part of the marketing process and key to the long-term success of any organization. This course focuses on the processes through which individuals or groups acquire, use, and dispose of products, services, or experiences. This course explores a range of approaches to consumption and consumer behavior, encouraging students to critically evaluate their relative merits. Accordingly, insights are drawn from a range of disciplines including psychology and economics, science and technology studies, sociology, cultural theory, and anthropology. In addition to exploring the significance of consumer behavior for commercial organizations, the course demonstrates how consumption is positioned as both a problem for and solution to a number of contemporary social and policy challenges.

This course introduces students to (1) the main disciplines which shape education, including sociology, philosophy, economics, history, and psychology, and the accounts they give of the relationships between education and social change; (2) the structures of formal education in the UK and the different conceptions of the value and purposes of education they represent; (3) how key stakeholders, such as policymakers, professional associations, teacher unions and employer bodies, have influenced the ways in which education is organized, for example, by raising the school leaving age, the introduction of a National Curriculum, or Academies; (4) the potential of education to create a more just and socially cohesive society, and what structural, organizational, and individual barriers help or hinder the realization of this vision; and (5) the role of educational theory and research in identifying and analyzing critical educational changes, using concepts such as, marketization, widening participation, social justice, and social inclusion.

This course explores the representation of revenge across a wide selection of literary texts, some of which are read in translation. Among the topics investigated are tensions between the vengeance of the individual and the operations of law, the moral and emotional transformation of the revenger, the haunting presence of the dead, and ideas about pollution and expiation. Starting with plays from the classical period which form an essential background to revenge tragedy of the 16th and 17th centuries, students study a range of tragedies, relating individual texts to dramatic ideas of genre, to traditions and conventions of stage representation, and to the historical contexts of the period.