University of Edinburgh

Access to modern energy is seen as fundamental to reducing poverty, and improving education, livelihoods and health across the global south. Yet in the context of climate change and the UN's sustainable development goals the question of what kind of energy is appropriate for whom has become more important than ever. Meanwhile, the quest for new reserves of fossil fuels and attempts to increase the use of alternative energy is transforming relationships between the global south and the global north.
This course approaches the study of energy, fuel and electricity in Africa, Latin America, South Asia and the Pacific as the study of social, cultural and political change. We will explore both the role of energy in post-colonial projects of nationalist modernization and the place of energy in contemporary projects of socio-economic development. Students explore the social and cultural politics of oil, coal, hydroelectricity, wind, and solar. And they shift focus between big infrastructure projects, like dams and coal plants, designed to generate electricity for people living on the grid to small, decentralized infrastructures projects designed for those living off the grid.

The city invites exploration across a compact and diverse topography, where evidence of the historic and the contemporary can often be found side by side. In an urban site we can discover a range of phenomena, the physical, psychological and ephemeral, all of which invite a wide range of interpretation and response. Through three distinct yet related projects students on this course will be encouraged to employ a variety of tactics in establishing and developing a personal language of response. This could be through drawing, photography, recording, film making, repurposing objects, notation or writing. The course will have recorded lectures and other resources alongside online structured tutorials, and discussion. Art Practice, research strategies, and the presentation of finished work will be addressed through online lectures from a variety of ECA staff with different expertise.

The course provides a framework for understanding key concepts and contemporary debates about food, as well as critically evaluating how past, current, and future food-related issues are framed and dealt with locally and globally. Students ask: What is food and where has it come from? Can we measure food? How does food act on us? Has food anything to do with government? Who can grow food and where? Whom do we eat with and who is not at the table? How could food be different? Can food be 'sustained' and is there a politics of food?

Often referred to as the "age of improvement," the Victorian era was one of unprecedented growth and development. The Victorians not only benefited from the technological advantages afforded by the full flowering of the Industrial Revolution but also enjoyed the profits that came with Britain's economic and political rise to world dominance. With this rise came profound social change as politicians, academics, social reformers, manufacturers, and religious leaders vied to institute new sensibilities regarding morality, spirituality, science, charity, education, and political representation. This transformation naturally affected the type and style of buildings that were erected during this period, dramatically altering the character of Britain's rural and urban landscapes. This course considers the architectural consequences of these transformations by exploring the development of theories and practices in architecture in the context of the social and cultural changes (and challenges) that gave rise to them. Although the Victorian era may be seen to have come to a close with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, the course concludes by examining how these transformations were carried through and further developed in the first decade of the 20th century leading up to the First World War.