King's College London

The course examines the classical distinction between 'nature’ and ‘nurture’, and the status of genetic and environmental explanations of psychological variation. The research techniques covered include twin studies, gene-environment interaction studies, Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) and polygenic risk scores. The course also explores the nature of gender differences, including the role of biological sex and culture in the development of gender identity, and sex differences in cognitive abilities and vulnerability to mental health problems and developmental disorders such as autism. Lastly, students explore social and cultural influences on the vulnerability to mental health problems, using developmental psychology, global mental health, and social psychiatry approaches. 

This course maps out the contemporary social media landscape. It explores the concepts, practices, and cultures that have emerged through the use of social media, and the issues of contention that have developed in related academic debates. It also situates social media in a historical context, drawing attention to continuities, and disjunctions in how computer-mediated communication interacts with economic, political, and social life.

In this course students learn about crucial cognitive functions. To learn about these functions, the course looks at ‘distorted’ cognitions in health, in neurological, and in psychiatric patients. Distortions, in memory, perception, and across other areas of cognition, are highly informative. Healthy human beings are often inaccurate when judging what is right in front of their eyes, what happened in an event from their memory or how much their behavior is modulated by emotional responses. Neurological injury leads to systematic changes in perception and cognition and by studying these distortions we can learn about the role of different brain regions and networks in affected functions. Finally, psychiatric illness often dramatically modulates conscious experience. From looking at both everyday and pathological ‘distortions’ students learn more about how the brain fulfils the incredibly complex task of creating our mental world. 

This course covers linear models, regression analysis, analysis of variance, with applications in various fields. Students use a specialized statistical software package to analyze linear models. 

This course introduces students to Italian politics and political economy in the context of its insertion into European integration and world politics, and is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the historical analysis of the Italian institutional and administrative systems; the Italian political system; interest organization; and socio-economic cleavages and the Italian labor markets. The second part focuses on the political economy of Italy in Europe, Europeanisation of decision-making and implementation in economic, monetary, and fiscal matter and the impact of the Euro-zone crisis on Italy. The third part is concerned with the place of Italy in the world, Italian migratory policy and its relations with neighboring countries.

The course provides students with an understanding of the key issues in the historical, philosophical, ethical, and sociological approaches to the study of war and the military. It develops students’ understanding of the relationship between armed forces and the societies they protect, and it engages with war as a moral problem and the tools that philosophers have created to limit its brutality and guide belligerents. It explores why, in spite of these tools, wars can descend into barbarity, crime, and genocide, making a special case study of the Holocaust in the Second World War. It looks at dynamics of protest against war and then goes on to interrogate the intellectual, economic, and financial factors that drive outcomes and shape war as a social dynamic. The term concludes with explorations of what war teaches us about human nature and the social contract, humans’ relationship with their environment and national identity. Students in this course undertake the spring-term portion of the yearlong course War And Society.