King's College London

This course examines filmic representations of key social, political, and historical events in Portugal and Brazil, focusing on efforts by directors and producers in both countries to articulate history, memory, and national identity. Key concepts students engage with are race, gender, colonialism/post-colonialism, social inequality, memory, identity, among others.

This course examines in depth the critical legacies of and debates surrounding film authorship. The course surveys key theoretical texts and explores them in themselves as well as through comparative case studies of two directors-Robert Bresson and Takeshi Kitano-who have both produced a significant body of work and given rise to substantial attention to their respective careers in film. Students consider how Bresson and Kitano fit into and/or defy the "auteur theory" and its variants through close attention to both the films themselves and the critical discourses (aesthetic, historical, national, generic) they have generated. The course invites students to consider what "film directing" is, as artistic, and cultural practice.

This course is concerned with the ways we design, develop, and assess new technologies and innovations for organizations. It considers the activities involved in the design process: how to identify what users need, how to design solutions that fit those needs, and how to assess whether technology meets those needs.  It focusses on computer technologies to support work activities and organizations. The first part of the module details approaches and methods for design and development. The second part focusses on recent areas of technological innovation that are relevant to businesses and organizations. The course considers technology and innovation from a social scientific perspective. 

This course explores the processes and patterns of climate variability and change, and considers how these aspects of climate impact society. The course emphasizes the concept that climate is not only a determinant of human activities but is one of humankind's greatest resources. The course also examines how it can be one of humankind's greatest threats, due to the occurrence of climate extremes and anthropogenic-related changes to the global climate system. The course explores the relationship between climate and society; climate oscillations and teleconnections as well as the mechanisms underlying climatic variability; the nature of direct and indirect impacts of climate on society and the science of climate change and how climate change impact assessments are conducted; climate risk and its assessment; how climate knowledge can be applied to the problem of sustainable development.