King's College London

This course introduces the basic concepts and tools of Statistical Mechanics at equilibrium. Lectures provide an overview of the powerful methods used to describe systems with a large number of degrees of freedom, with many different examples. Students learn how to build an intuitive and physical understanding of technical and mathematical aspects developed in this course.

The course has two sections, with the first section focusing on urbanization, urban form and structure, urban biodiversity and conservation, and the second section focusing on urban hydrology, urban rivers, urban river restoration and both terrestrial and aquatic pollution.  The lecture series ends with a field trip to an urban river site in London.

This course introduces students to theories and practices of human resource management (HRM). Emphasis is placed on understanding how HRM as a function relates to strategic business decision-making. In addition, the course discusses the design of key high-performance and high-commitment HR practices. The course stimulates critical thinking about the roles that alternative HRM strategies and practices can play in contributing to positive employee and organizational outcomes.

This course analyses the basic concepts associated with competing theoretical perspectives on the nature of the firm and analysis of market coordination. It develops an awareness of how recent advances in the theory of Industrial Organization relate to previously dominant perspectives in the field. Students develop an understanding of how different approaches to Industrial Organization have been applied at the level of specific firms, particular industries, and with regard to concrete policy initiatives. Students learn to outline, evaluate, and illustrate the contributions of transaction cost economics, resource-based theories of the firm, and evolutionary approaches to Industrial Organization; evaluate and illustrate accounts of the market order which highlight the role of social rules, relationships, and conventions in the functioning of competitive processes; and demonstrate the policy relevance of recent theoretical advances in Industrial Organization by evaluating the promotion of quasi-market structures in sectors such as broadcasting.

This course introduces students to the full range of the material and visual culture of the ancient world in Rome from the Republican period to late Antiquity. The course includes a study of the built environment, from the major urban and imperial monuments to the forts and farms of the frontiers, the images housed in public buildings, houses and tombs, as well as portable objects, and the material residues of daily life and ritual. Students in this option undertake the spring term of the yearlong course Art & Archaeology of Greece & Rome.