King's College London

The course examines energy in international relations in four parts. First, a brief overview of the history of hydrocarbons will familiarize students with how modern energy supplies developed in the past two centuries. During the first two sessions of the course, students also acquire conceptual and empirical understanding of energy value chains. Next, the course devotes three sessions to energy security as a key perspective in the studies of energy resources. After familiarizing students with the theoretical aspects of energy security, the focus is on several distinct cases examining both the supply and the demand-side of energy security on a global scale. Such cases include the energy dilemmas between energy-rich Russia/Eurasia and hydrocarbon-poor EU; the rising role of China and Asia in global energy demand and their pursuit of energy security; and the evolution of energy geopolitics between the oil-rich Persian Gulf region and the US. The third part of the course dedicates two sessions to the link between energy and development. The focus of the first session is on the literature examining the link between resource wealth and development, while the second session examines resource nationalism and its historical evolution. The fourth part looks at key challenges faced with respect to energy in a carbon-constrained world.

This course introduces students to the main techniques that economists use for estimating economic relationships, testing economic theories and evaluating government and business policies. The course covers the fundamentals of linear regression analysis as well as more advanced topics related to estimation and inference for probability models, panel, and time series data. Students study examples based on real data and published research. In class, students use Stata, a fast and versatile software for quantitative research.

In the wake of the logical revolution at the end of the 19th century, a number of philosophers well-versed in formal logic turned their attention to the project of understanding human languages, not just logical ones. Others argued for a different approach, claiming that the tools of logic are either insufficient or just the wrong sort of thing to help us understand the nuances of human language use. This course introduces students to these two broad strands of philosophical thinking about language. Students cover how each strand arose, developed, and eventually intertwined with the other. Then, drawing on the tools of both, students study a range of interesting linguistic phenomena—from foundational notions like meaning and communication to more complex and recalcitrant notions like slurring and silencing.

This course examines the distinctive character of innovation in the public services; the ways in which different sectors participate in public service innovation and facilitate social change; and the challenges and opportunities for organizations to enable and drive innovation and change to improve public outcomes. 

How we tell stories and what our stories reveal about us, our lives and our relations with others has attracted the attention of numerous strands of social scientific inquiry. It is notable that narrative research interviews constitute the main qualitative method for identity analysis. Discourse and sociolinguistic studies of storytelling have drawn on this diversity of social scientific work but they have also infused it with vital insights into how everyday life stories are told in interaction with other people and in specific contexts. The course familiarizes students with the main frameworks within discourse and sociolinguistic studies for the analysis of stories and identities. The presentation of concepts and analytical tools become tangible with close analysis of a wide range of stories from various everyday life contexts: cafés, classrooms, the workplace, social media platforms, etc.