University of Edinburgh

This course asks and answers the question "what are data, and how do they come to be?" The story of data reveals the moral and political values that shape human practices of counting, measuring, and labelling reality, and helps us better understand the growing power of data in today's world. Designed to engage students across the disciplines, this introductory course offers a foundational integration of basic concepts and methods of data science with the historical and philosophical context that reveals their ethical and political dimensions as inseparable from their scientific value. The course draws from the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, history, mathematics, computer science, and the design arts to build up a more comprehensive picture of how data are constructed, interpreted, shared, and used for a growing range of scientific, commercial, public and creative purposes.

This course focuses on computation in the nervous system. Students are introduced to basic neuroscience concepts, learn about how computational models are used to simulate processes in the brain, and learn about theories for how the brain processes information and performs computations. Topics include an introduction to basic neuroscience concepts, models of neurons, neural encoding, neural decoding, information theory, network models, and plasticity/learning. The course is delivered through lectures and computer labs.

The course equips students with the skills necessary to understand, critically assess, and undertake the research design process relevant to their degree. Students gain a good grasp of the behavioral assumptions in social science research, knowledge of a range of data collection methods (and how to assess the appropriateness of each), as well as the steps within a successful research project design. More specifically students learn how to choose a topic, formulate a research question and hypotheses, select cases, navigate measurement issues, and undertake a range of data collection methods.

This course contains fundamentals of homogeneous and heterogeneous reaction engineering processes. The basic concepts of chemical kinetics, reactor behavior, and catalysis are introduced and applied to the design of isothermal and non-isothermal reactors.

This course is an introduction to the political, economic, social, and cultural history of the Middle East from 1800- c.1950. Opening at the beginning of the 19th century it examines the program of reform and state-building of the Ottoman Empire to defend itself against the growing military and economic power of Europe. The course then goes on to address the defeat of the Ottomans in World War I, the post-1919 settlement and the rise of nationalism in the interwar period, and ends with the establishment of Israel in 1948.

This is a course on the contemporary domestic politics of China. Students focus on how the Chinese political institutions operate today by addressing a variety of issues and aspects: the evolution of the party-state from 1949 to the present; the political economy of the Reform era; the development and role of the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese political system. Taking an intersectional approach, students also assess other contemporary issues faced by China, including migration, social movements, and media censorship. The course concludes with an examination of China's foreign relations and its future, such as the debate over China's role in the global economy and international security.

In most societies, gift-giving acts as a critical form of social currency. Gifts mark special occasions such as birthdays; they cement diplomatic relationships; they act as bribes and charitable offerings. Gifts and gift-exchange can therefore tell historians much about the social, political, and moral norms of past societies. This course examines the fascinating histories of gift-giving in a cross-period and trans-regional context.