King's College London

This course starts from the theology of Augustine of Hippo as that which has been formative of the Christian tradition. It explores his characterization of the will, of sin, of grace, and of freedom. Drawing on these Augustinian resources, the course asks how the Christian theological imagination can shape the way that contemporary societal phenomena, such as capitalism and climate change, are diagnosed and addressed. Are these examples of "structural sin"? What sort of agency is possible within these contexts?

The Reformation, which began with Martin Luther in early sixteenth-century Germany, was one of the great turning-points of modern European history, splitting Catholic Christendom and giving rise to many different strands of Protestantism. Using primary sources extant from the period, in English translation if necessary, this course addresses this development in a mixture of lecture and seminar formats. With a broad chronological span, and a geographical scope stretching across much of Western Europe, it offers the stimulating intellectual challenge of learning how to relate key theological concepts to the experiences of the people, in all their diversity.
 

The course explores some of the principles and doctrines underlying the criminal law. It investigates some of the theoretical (and particularly, ethical) problems that criminal law raises. The course increases students’ understanding of many of the principles underlying the criminal law, especially those concerning the scope of criminal prohibitions and the criteria for attributing responsibility and blame to individual wrongdoers. With increased understanding of those principles, students learn to integrate analysis of general issues and principles with argument about particular rules and doctrines in the criminal law.

The course introduces the broad field of Health Technology Assessment (HTA). HTA is a collection of methodologies used to make evidenced-based assessment of the value added by new technologies to inform policy and decision making. The course introduces the full life-cycle of a new medical technology from the perspective of a device inventor and a government regulator, including safety regulations. It covers methodologies including systematic reviewing, decision theory, evidence synthesis, health economics, and the overall methodology used for HTA in practice.

This course explores how people engage in political activism to challenge structures of domination and oppression, and to bring about social and political change. It explores key debates about political activism and social change in contemporary societies, drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives (e.g. sociology, political science, cultural studies, oral history) and different case studies (e.g. public housing, environment activism, gender and LGBTQ activism, anti-racist movements, black power movements, workplace and labor activism, student activism). 

The course provides an in-depth approach for exploring current concepts, ideas, and problems in selected topics in mammalian (including human) reproductive physiology. It develops the student's interest in, and critical appraisal of, current research in reproductive biology.

Drawing on a historical, institutionalist, and policy perspective the course examines comparatively changes in the political and economic domains in relation to Spain, Greece, and Portugal in the process of EU integration in their post-dictatorship period and beyond. The course traces processes of economic restructuring as crisis management strategies adopted in the 1980s to deal with the political and economic crisis of the 1970s. Drawing on these institutional legacies, the consolidation of the Eurozone in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the unravelling of the North Atlantic financial crisis in 2008, the course seeks to understand the unfolding of the financial crisis in Southern European Countries, the adopted political and policy solutions, and the ensuing political crises. 

This course introduces students to the key principles of genetics including Mendelian genetics, inheritance of genes, gene interaction, sex determination, polyploidy, casus and effects of mutations, gene cloning, prokaryote and eukaryote gene expression, recombination and its use in gene mapping, bacterial genetics, population and evolutionary genetics, basic molecular biology techniques including plasmid construction, PCR and DNA sequencing, and research applications of genetics. Students develop skills through data handling and problem solving, and through laboratory-based practical work.

The field of international relations and political science has given little attention to organized crime and corruption, which has become a focus of interest within these disciplines only recently. From an international relations perspective, it is worth investigating how organized crime is embedded in a larger political context, how politics interconnects with criminality on national and international level and how globalization affects internationalization of crime and corruption. The course covers definitional and conceptual issues related with organized crime, corruption, and terrorism; the impact of globalization on the internationalization of organized crime; the nexus and interaction between crime, corruption, and terrorism; variations in crime-terror nexus across different parts of the world; the anti-crime and anti-terrorism policies, and other issues.

The course develops an awareness of the structure and function of tropical forest ecosystems and provides an intellectually stimulating understanding of the biophysical, ecological and anthropic processes which characterize these environments. To develop an awareness of the human impacts on these important systems and the kinds of geographical tools available for monitoring, modelling, and mitigation of the worst effects of these impacts.