King's College London

This course provides an in-depth introduction to some core topics in modern development economics. The course is divided into two halves. The first half, taught by Dr. Liang Bai, covers more of the macro literature, discussing the roles of institutions, history, international trade, as well as religion and culture in shaping the economic outcomes of different countries. The second half, taught by Dr. Dimitrios Minos, focuses more on the micro literature, discussing the roles of health, education, gender, as well as migration and remittances in shaping the economic outcomes of different individuals/households. 

The course is an intermediate finance course that builds upon students' existing knowledge to explore fundamental financial theories underpinning crucial corporate finance decisions. Students address pivotal financial questions such as: How should your business raise capital, and for what purpose? Should capital be sourced through debt or equity investors, and how much debt is optimal? What returns must you generate for your shareholders, and should dividends be distributed? Is it preferable to purchase assets or lease them? What are your business’s short-term cash flow requirements, and how will these needs be financed? These essential questions regularly confront business leaders worldwide. Throughout this ten-week course, students will discover that while some solutions emerge clearly from established financial theories, others rely heavily on strategic judgment due to inherent business uncertainties. 

This course provides students with an overview of the trans-Atlantic slave trade as it affected societies in West Africa and the New World, from the 16th century to the early 19th century. The course is taught thematically, so that major themes are interrelated in both social and political history on both sides of the Atlantic. In Africa we look especially at Angola, Dahomey, the Gold Coast, Kongo and Senegambia while in the New World there is a focus on Barbados, Brazil, Haiti, and Jamaica. Finally, the course will also consider the impact of this history in Europe through discussions of the rise of consumer societies and the relationship between this and the Abolition movement. By the end of the course, students will have enhanced their critical understanding of this major historical event and will have developed detailed knowledge of specific case studies which sharpen this knowledge.

This course gives students an understanding of the nature and causes of cancer from a genetic, cellular, and molecular perspective. Students gain a thorough grounding in cancer cell biology, and they also develop employability skills such as working in a team, presentation skills, and interpretation of experimental datasets.

English Lit and Pop Music? Yes! This course reads a variety of English literature, produced from the Middle Ages up through last week, in light of popular music of the last fifty years—and vice versa, too. The course takes both fields seriously (though fun is encouraged too), with an emphasis on connections with King's College London. A variety of genres, eras, and voices, from English lit, the English department, and the music world come together here. Archival work, both at KCL (e.g., the Duffy archives) and beyond, provides an important foundation and opportunities for discovery.  

This course introduces students to the ethical theories of various 17th & 18th century moral philosophers and explains their significance for modern ethical theory. The course relates their thought to continuing debates about moral rationality, sentiment, moral objectivity, moral virtue, and moral obligation.

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.