King's College London

In 1937, anthropologist Tom Harrison, poet Charles Madge and filmmaker Humphrey Jennings began a "scientific experiment" recruiting members of the public, to "systematically" observe the lives of ordinary Britons. The Mass Observation project ran from 1937-1966 and was reanimated in 1981 continuing to today. This course uses the Mass Observation archive – held at the University of Sussex and substantially digitized by Adam Matthew – and its unique collection of diaries, study directives, and social surveys to explore class, gender, emotions, and experience across the second half of the twentieth century to the present. It also offers students first-hand insight into the sources and methods available (life writing, surveys and "directives," social investigations, oral histories) for interrogating constructions of gender, class, sexuality, race and ethnicity, age, ableism, and faith commitments over the last eighty years.  

Virgil’s AENEID has been described as a "classic" of western literature for many reasons, and this course is devoted to identifying those reasons and assessing their validity. This course looks closely at the epic itself: its story, which bridges myth and history; its literary form, which depends upon an exceptionally wide range of influences; and its various social, political, philosophical and religious viewpoints. Students also study the ways in which later artists, critics, and scholars have read the Aeneid.

This course explores the changing nature of work and expertise in various financial professions, paying particular attention to cutting edge research in this area. As King's Business School graduates will end up in a range of different financial fields, it is important that they are exposed to the realities of career pathways in those different fields as well as understanding financial careers from a deeper social science perspective. 

The course introduces students to the analysis of spoken discourse, drawing on conversation analysis, Goffman's micro-sociology, and linguistic ethnography. Students learn how these perspectives help us to understand different aspects of talk-in-interaction, see where they overlap, and put them to use in the analysis of empirical data.     

Covid-19 is an infectious disease caused by a type of virus, manifesting itself in individual human beings; but the covid-19 pandemic was not just a health issue, but a social and economic phenomenon. This course explores the economics and politics of the covid-19 pandemic and the policy response (health-related, economic and social) in the UK and other countries. It does not cover specific medical or scientific aspects of covid-19 as a disease, but beyond that discusses a wide range of topics relating both to the direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic on societies and economies across the glob. There is a particular focus on how and why policy decisions were taken; and on the longer-term implications.

This course is intended not just for historians, but also for humanities students, social scientists, and scientists and engineers who want to learn not only how the world has been transformed by innovation, by imitation, and by historically novel machines, structures and processes which have resulted.  It is concerned primarily with innovation in the material, and that taking place in the context of capitalism. However, it also covers the socialist world, and the poor world, of the 20th century. It is also an invitation to learn about how to think about this central transformation in human history. The course also provides tools for examining such elusive yet important notions as invention, innovation, science, technology, and introduce key debates surrounding questions of machines, production, and efficiency in the historiography of the 20th century, relating them to various different forms of analysis from political economy to gender studies, in sites from the factory to the field and the home, covering the globe.  

Do feminists everywhere share universal concerns? How have feminists in non-Western societies navigated the twin challenge of responding to patriarchy and to Western imperialism? How have they reacted to feminist scholarship in the West? What specific challenges have feminists in the Arab world and in China been responding to, historically and in the contemporary period? What importance have Islam and Confucianism had, respectively, in the formulation of feminist demands in these two parts of the world? In this course, students consider the question of the convergence and divergence of feminist discourses and ideas, East and West. Students will read primary texts written by feminists in China and in the Arab world, starting with the classical period of each tradition, and moving to the contemporary period.

This course provides an introduction to climate change science for students of economics and business. It provides the basics to understand the physical challenges of sustainable development and the key role of businesses in tackling climate change. 

This course gives students the opportunity to explore in greater depth the cell and molecular basis for much of cell behaviour that often fails in disease processes. 

This course focuses on the philosophical and ethical arguments underlying a range of controversial real-world debates. Each week students focus on a specific debate and assess some of the strongest arguments put forward on either side. The course provides in-depth knowledge of some of the main theoretical and ethical arguments behind a range of deeply contested issues in contemporary politics, develops an ability to assess real-world problems from a philosophical and normative perspective, and develop a critical and reflective approach to the study of philosophical texts.