King's College London

This course introduces students to astrophysical and cosmological concepts. Planets, stars, and galaxies will be covered in the course together with the tools that astronomers, astrophysicists, and cosmologists use to explore them. 

This course explores foundational and methodological questions about psychology and cognitive science, exploiting the tools of philosophy to equip students to reflect critically on assumptions, concepts, and methods used. In the first half of the term, students apply this distinctive approach to five specific topics: change blindness and inattentional blindness; experimental evidence about conscious choice and free will; unconscious bias and implicit attitudes; the concept of mental disorder; social cognition, and mirror neurons. In the second half of the term, students investigate more general questions about aims, methods, and assumptions in psychology, focusing on these topics: the nature of psychological explanation and its relationship with neuroscience; the analogy between minds and computers; mental representation, the ‘Language of Thought’ and cognitive maps; and the use of neuroimaging to ascribe mental states.

Government has, and continues to have, many ways of relating to businesses. This course takes a journey through them, tracking their historical changes and investigating how they shape our world today. Its particular focus is on how government ensures the provision of public services, whether through public or private sectors, or some combination of the two. What is the role of government today? How has this changed over recent decades? And what role does business play in contemporary society? In addressing these questions, the course focuses on the role of both public and private sectors in the management and delivery of services including health, education, transport and culture. It investigates the different ways such organizations coordinate their work and equips students to make critical decisions about whether services are best provided by hierarchical governments, businesses within markets, or in some other way.

This course looks at some of the varieties of independent cinema that have emerged from America since the early 1980s. Films by directors such as John Waters, Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, Spike Lee, Todd Haynes, Lisa Cholodenko, and Richard Linklater, are examined both within the context of their cinematic precursors and influences, and the wider social and institutional circumstances that helped to create audiences for them.

This course focuses on examining the contributions that social, cultural, political and economic factors have made towards environmental problems by applying insights from scholarship from across the social sciences. Working with case studies of contemporary environmental issues, students consider how and why these issues have emerged, and reflect on the risks, challenges, and opportunities associated with past, present, and future responses. Students pay attention to the roles and responsibilities of a range of stakeholders and institutions (including citizens, consumers, activists and social movements, state policy makers, international organizations, and corporations), and to the ethical and political tensions involved in enacting practical solutions to environmental issues.

This course demonstrates the ways in which contemporary organizations navigate an increasingly turbulent environment. To achieve this, it combines necessary theoretical material with contemporary examples to convey the importance of, and different perspectives on, organizational change. The course covers topics including the nature and context of change, how individuals perceive and deal with change in a changing world, new ways of working, disruptive organizations and the gig economy, and the pivotal role of leaders in the organizational change process. 

Topics include elementary properties of integers; functions and their behavior; an introduction to recursion; algorithms and complexity; graphs including Euler’s Theorem; shortest path algorithm and vertex coloring; trees - applications include problem solving and spanning trees; directed graphs including networks; dynamic programming; codes and cyphers - with Hamming codes and RSA.

This course explores the psychology behind entrepreneurship and innovation. The topics include the personality of entrepreneurs and exploring whether entrepreneurs are born or made; how entrepreneurs make decisions about risk and manage uncertainty; what drives entrepreneurs and what "returns" they can expect (in terms of income and well-being); what success means to entrepreneurs and what the ingredients are of an ‘entrepreneurial culture’. The course also reflects on how each one of us can act in an entrepreneurial manner and adopt an entrepreneurial leadership style. The course examines the psychological underpinnings of the entrepreneurial process and innovative behaviors within established business. 

This course has been designed to provide students with an introduction to a range of important concepts, theories and principles that underpin the study of economics. Lectures take the form of lectures, case studies, and problem-solving exercises. The aims of the course are to: Provide students with an introduction to a number of essential economic concepts, principles and models, explain the functioning of markets, demand, supply, and government economic policies, and provide students with some analytical tools to tackle economic problems.

This course charts terrorism’s shifting signature by examining its impact upon London’s modernization. Students discover a city that has been subjected to rapid technological change and new political ideas, that are both wholly alien and eerily familiar. They encounter London as a symbolic target for post-colonial violence and a fulcrum through which terrorist action and state policy are aligned. Approaching the subject through a variety of disciplinary perspectives, students are exposed to a diversity of cultural texts (from novels to films, photographs to monuments) as well as a range of London archives that will contextualize each terrorist incident. These external resources prove invaluable for the final assessment, where students produce a digital e-portfolio exploring three of the terrorist events examined in the module.