University of Edinburgh

This course explores how organizations can work effectively. It covers a wide range of topics to help students understand the principles and processes that underpin effective organizations, and how organizational behavior concepts, theories, and techniques can be applied in work and management settings.

This course offers an introduction to Archaeology, focusing on case studies from Eurasian later prehistory and beyond. It discusses themes such as the rise of early states, monumentality, urbanism, and death and burial. It offers insights into the workings of archaeological research and interpretation through addressing key theoretical perspectives and methods.

This course is an introduction to the study of traditional narrative. Students explore the diverse ways that scholars have attempted to account for the origin, transmission, and practice of traditional tales, including psychoanalysis, Oral-Formulaic theory and the Historic-Geographical method. From this interdisciplinary vantage point, students give close attention to the storytelling heritage of Scotland and Ireland, using materials from the School of Scottish Studies Archives and other sources.

This course explores the concepts of sustainability and social responsibility through a multidisciplinary approach, examining them from a scientific, social, economic, political, and artistic viewpoint. This course investigates the relationship between planetary boundaries, resource consumption and social development, and explores the range of interdisciplinary approaches to address these global challenges. It also covers the topics of sustainability metrics, personal contributions and sustainable lifestyles, as well as considering systems thinking, ways of knowing, power and responsibility as well as systemic structures and biases that may hold us in particular ways of thinking, being, and doing.

What does anthropology have to say about some of the most important issues facing us today? Anthropologists don't just engage with small-scale exotic societies but have always contributed to public debates about global issues that affect us all. In this course, students examine how concepts and ideas that have driven anthropology help us shed new light on debates that are at the heart of contemporary questions about how our societies work. The issues explored vary from year-to-year, examples include climate change, hunger, well-being, body modification, and human rights.

This course introduces soil mechanics and engineering geology for geotechnical engineering applications such as foundations, rail construction, and tunnels. It considers the fundamental mechanics of soils as a heterogeneous mixture of air, water, and solid particles and the origin of these materials from their parent rocks. It analyses the deformation of natural and man-made structures that comprise or are built upon soil, and the flow of fluids within them. It develops an understanding of how the fundamental principles of geological sciences influence the design and construction of engineering structures.
 

This course introduces key concepts of the service-dominant logic of business on an international scale. Focusing on themes such as co-production, service leadership, and service competition, the course familiarize students with current academic theories, while frequent guest speakers emphasize how these are applied in practice across the private, public, and Third sector, and across developed and emerging countries. The course is an essential asset for anyone planning a career in service industries, with relevance for consulting, retail, healthcare, hospitality, the arts, or financial services. The course also introduces the role of services in development, drawing from global case studies.
 

This course looks at the political, cultural, and religious translation undergone by the Roman empire - and with it classical civilization - in Late Antiquity (ca. 300-ca. 800). How did the monolithic late Roman state give way to Germanic kingdoms in western Europe, and develop into the Greek-speaking Byzantine empire of the eastern Mediterranean? And how did the monotheistic religions, Christianity, and Islam, establish themselves and impact politics and everyday life across the Mediterranean and Near East? The central themes of the course are understanding the political transformations of the period in relationship to profound social, cultural, and religious change, and preparing students for specialized courses at a higher level.

This course introduces students to important concepts, movements, and thinkers within the "late modern" period of philosophy between Kant and the early 20th century. This period encompasses many thinkers and movements of enduring relevance today. They are still relevant because they set the terms of questions that philosophers are still asking, or because important currents of contemporary philosophy are defined in terms of their opposition to these late modern movements. This course introduces students to a range of thinkers and texts from this period. Students critically engage with some of the philosophical concerns and projects that motivated late modern thinkers, and consider their relevance to philosophy today. The thinkers and texts covered vary from year to year, but the period covered by the course usually includes: Kant and post-Kantian thought; Hegel and Marx and the roots of existentialist and phenomenological philosophy (in e.g. Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, and de Beauvoir).

The course examines the representation of modern China in both literature and film from the cultural renaissance of the 1910s and 1920s, through the upheavals of the Sino-Japanese War. Topics covered include the emancipation of women, youth and age, sex and love, literature and dissent, literature and power. The course stresses the close ties that have existed between the worlds of literary and cinematic creativity throughout this period. The course develops insights into one of the world's major civilizations in its modern transformations; develops an understanding of 20th China through two of its chief modes of expression; and develops the communicative skills of writing and discussion.