University of Edinburgh

This course equips students to understand causes, effects, framings of, and responses to climate change and related phenomena around the world, from a critical social science perspective. Building on anthropology's long-standing engagement with social transformation and human-environment relations, and more recent environmental turns across social sciences and humanities, students explore how recent identifications of climate crisis and debates around the Anthropocene are situated in longer histories of environmental change and social injustice, as well as their contemporary manifestations and politics. The course is grounded in empirical, ethnographic work that explores what environmental and social changes mean and entail for people, communities, organizations, and nations around the world - across Europe, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Its approach to questions of climate and environment emerges from sustained attention to the afterlives of empire and ongoing colonial relations between Global North and South. Through a genuine engagement with decolonial and indigenous scholarship, as well as critical studies emerging from the Global South, the course offers students a unique opportunity to engage with a diverse range of analyses and discussions pertaining to the environment and climate change. 

The concept of trauma has gained increasing traction in the past decade, in the recognition that the impact it can have on individuals can be lifechanging. The Scottish Government for example now seeks to have all its policies based on a "trauma informed" mindset. Underpinning this is the understanding that adverse childhood experiences play an important role in the life chances of individuals. Academic research in this area is often inter-disciplinary, and feeds into government and 3rd sector policy. This course seeks to explore these new developments and introduces students to the different ways that trauma is experienced by both individuals and society.

Dynamic programming is a neat way of solving sequential decision optimization problems. Integer Programming provides a general method of solving problems with logical constraints. Game theory is concerned with mathematical modelling of behavior in competitive strategic situations in which the success of strategic choices of one individual (person, company, server, ...) depends on the choices of others. By the end of this course, students have gained: ability to formulate and solve a sequential decision optimization problem; ability to formulate and solve optimization problems with logical constraints; ability to find optimal and equilibrium strategies for zero- and nonzero-sum 2x2 matrix games; and mastery of the theory underlying the solution methods.

This course examines fundamental and advanced topics in social psychology. Students look at the topics of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination and how these manifest in the world today. They also cover how these can be challenged and reduced. After covering these topics, students examine in depth a range of specialist areas of social psychological research such as dehumanization, objectification, and the ways in which people think about animals.

This course develops an integrated understanding of modern approaches to some of the core areas of psychology (the remaining core areas to be covered in Psychology 1B). Students are also presented with a broader historical, conceptual, and methodological framework of scientific and psychological research. Besides this, students are taught and can practice a range of general research skills.

This course examines a selection of writings from a variety of national contexts, and analyses a range of texts across the corpus (broadly understood) of the "Coming of Age" narrative. The course explores how writers have responded to the challenge of depicting the complex processes informing how we become who we are, and what we understand to be the rites of passage from childhood through adolescence to adulthood. How do we find "our voice"? What gets in the way of personal growth, or of us feeling wholly ourselves? What is the impact of nature, nurture, education, language, family, geography, and ideology, for example?

This course guides students through the principles, practice, and business strategies behind the world of graphic design agencies and their structures. Through practical projects and collaboration with peers in both junior and senior years, students form a personal vision for their place within the creative sector. Students learn to articulate their ideas and make clear intentions and persuasive arguments about their practice, context, and career path.

 

This course is about randomness as a resource in algorithms and computation. The course introduces basic mathematical models and techniques and applies them to the design and analysis of various randomized algorithms. Students also cover a variety of applications of probabilistic ideas and randomization in several areas of computer science.

The course focuses on Gaelic song and its role in society. The approach is thematic, and the areas to be addressed include song and sense of place, religion, the emigrant experience, the role of the township bard, and community and labor. The aim is to show how song interacts with the community. Performance is emphasized, and the course draws on recordings housed in the School of Scottish Studies Archives at the University of Edinburgh as well as on live sung examples.