King's College London

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.

In this course, students explore ancient Greek drama through a study of select plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. The plays are read in English translation. Students read four plays, one by each playwright. In our reading, students consider such issues as the development of the genre, performance conventions, gender, ethnicity, and religion. Particular attention is paid to the evolving relationship between Athenian drama and the socio-political context of the democracy. Students supplement our investigations with readings from contemporary scholarship.

This course offers a global introduction to comparative politics, focusing on case studies of politics and religion around the world. The course introduces students to approaches to analyzing and critiquing the way in which secular and religious issues are negotiated in institutions such as government, religious hierarchies, and civil society. Moreover, the course develops students' broader understandings of how power, conflict, and identities are conceived in the modern, globalized world. Topics can include religion-state relations, identity politics, religion and violence, and various international case studies of political participation and mobilization.

Students study how marketing strategies, tactics, and analytics tie together to create a digital marketing campaign, learning how a market position is selected and bolstered by the appropriate marketing tools to achieve success, critically considering the advantages and disadvantages of different digital marketing choices, and applying a range of tools to create realistic and viable marketing campaigns. 

This course covers a range of contemporary topics in economics from both a theoretical and practical perspective. Students learn the theoretical arguments behind each topic covered but also study a whole range of empirical methodologies employed by economists to test these theories.