University of Edinburgh

The course is concerned with gathering, critically analyzing, and presenting a coherent body of information on an engineering-related topic. The group is allocated a theme and each member of the group is assigned a topic relevant to the theme. The students, operating as a group, are required to research the theme, developing a body of interrelated knowledge and an understanding of their topics. This is accomplished primarily through investigation of the published literature, and by making contact with industry and other organizations. The objective is to collect, distil, analyze and present in a logical fashion, a summary of the information collected.

In this course, students discuss current topics related to global environmental change. Topics include nature of contemporary/ongoing global warming; recent climate variability: models and reconstructions; discerning natural versus anthropogenic changes; future sea level rise; stability of ice sheets; atmospheric changes, rainfall, and extreme weather; future climate change predictions; and dangerous climate change & 2 degree warming.
 

This course develops students to understand the dynamic and contextual meaning of health and wellbeing within a complex and globalizing world. Political, sociological and ethical conceptualizations of health and wellbeing will be explored to understand the current health and policy contexts for individual, families and communities. The range of environmental, social, political and individual factors that influence health and wellbeing are explored within the context of contemporary society to examine how health inequalities are produced, replicated and reinforced.

This course offers a wide-ranging survey of Scandinavian history and culture from the Mesolithic (c. 8000 BC) to the Enlightenment (c. AD 1750) and beyond. It begins by defining and distinguishing the key concepts "Nordic" and "Scandinavian," the linguistic heritage of the regions concerned, and the core terminology used to compartmentalize and describe their past. It then moves on to the evolution of Scandinavian culture from earliest antiquity to the Iron Age, as a longitudinal introduction to our study of the Viking Age. The survey of Viking culture provides an overview of social structure, worldview, and belief, and examines different aspects of the Viking Expansion overseas. Students explore the discovery, settlement, and early society of Iceland, and also chart the rise and fall of the Danish Empires, the deep-reaching influence of the Hanseatic League, the profound impact the Protestant Reformation of the mid-16th Century on Nordic society, and the role of Sweden as an "Imperial power" in the 17th Century. The course concludes with an overview of the origins and ideals of the Enlightenment as experienced in the North.

This course surveys formative trends in Christian history throughout the world from the 16th century to the present day giving a comprehensive view of the global Christian movement in time and space. It covers mission and ministry in Africa, Latin America, Asia and North America, as well as following changes in Europe and movements of religious transformation, cultural encounter and missionary expansion. The course applies historical approaches and the study of original texts to the understanding of formative trends in Christian history throughout the world from the 16th century to the present day. In European history attention is paid to the 16th-century Reformations (with particular reference to Scotland), the impact on the churches of the Enlightenment and industrialization, and their response in the 20th century to totalitarian regimes in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. On the global stage, the course covers the expansion of European Christendom to Latin America, Asia and Africa, the role of Christianity in shaping American history, and the more recent growth of distinctive varieties of non-western Christianity. In tutorials these themes are illustrated by study of original texts. 

This second-semester course introduces students to the history of literature in Scotland in English and Scots, covering two periods of its self-conscious revival: the Modernist "Scottish Renaissance" between the world wars of the 20th century, and the contemporary period, defined as beginning with the first Devolution Referendum and the election of Margaret Thatcher as British prime minister in 1979. It focusses on how questions of literary form relate to the social, political, and intellectual context in which the text was written and read; that is, on how the text's formal achievement responds to changes in Scottish society and the wider world. 

The course introduces students to selected aspects of medieval Gaelic and Welsh literature in English translation. It will cover important and characteristic genres of these literatures, and provide historical and social backgrounds against which primary texts may be interpreted.