University of Edinburgh

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.

The first part of this course covers fundamental topics in discrete mathematics that underlie many areas of computer science and presents standard mathematical reasoning and proof techniques such as proof by induction. The second part of this course covers discrete and continuous probability theory, including standard definitions and commonly used distributions and their applications.

The course introduces students to the major theoretical traditions and conceptual frameworks used to make sense of international politics, including relations between states and interstate institutions as well as a range of global political processes. It shows how to use theory to make sense of the complex issues, developments, and events. The key objective of the course is to introduce students to the rich diversity of theoretical approaches - from orthodox to critical - within international relations and to offer them key analytical skills to compare and engage with theories and to use theories in their further research and studies. 

This course introduces students to the concepts and methodology needed to implement and analyze computational models of cognition. It considers the fundamental issues of using a computational approach to explore and model cognition. In particular, this course explores the way that computational models relate to, are tested against, and illuminate psychological theories and data. The course introduces both symbolic and subsymbolic modelling methodologies, and provides practical experience with implementing models. The symbolic part focuses on cognitive architectures, while the subsymbolic part introduces probabilistic models. 

An introduction to the physical processes occurring in the Earth's atmosphere. Interpretation of weather maps and satellite images, cloud types and formation, atmospheric structure, thermodynamic processes, rain formation, solar and terrestrial radiation, energy balance at the surface, cumulus and cumulonimbus convection, and air pollution.