University of Manchester

In this course, students learn to engage with information visually. They learn to recognize and critique oversimplifying, biased, or misleading forms of visual representation, and to create their own visualizations to explore and communicate data that matters to them. Using examples from a wide range of academic disciplines - from economics, to literature, meteorology, history, urban design, or computer science - students discover key principles of visual thinking and communication and learn how to create their own charts and maps. Historically, data visualization has often been used to discriminate, control, and police. In this course, students also explore interventions by critical data scientists, scholars, and activists who visualize data to expose injustice, challenge unfair classification systems, and speak truth to power. The course does not involve any coding and does not require previous technical knowledge.

Microbes, extremely diverse both in form and in function, play a critical role in the global ecosystem. Students explore how these organisms evolved from more primitive lifeforms to colonize new environmental niches. Students study their interactions with plants, animals, and insects and how they impact on our everyday lives.

The course introduces the basic concepts from a wide spectrum of topics in finance including financial statement analysis, time value of money, capital budgeting, bond valuation, stock valuation, stock returns and market efficiency, portfolio diversification, CAPM, cost of capital, corporate governance, and behavioural finance. In addition, it also introduces empirical research evidences that synthesise the aforementioned topics. 

The principles covered include caching in order to overcome latency; pipelining to increase processor utilization; Multi-Threading and Multi-Core principles, along with potential structures, and challenges such as memory coherency and consistency.

This course investigates the development of the Egyptian understanding of the Afterlife and the Gods. It discusses the role of the temple both as a religious and economic institution, and the creating of an industry based around the creation of funerary objects and tombs. It covers topics such as mummification, the development of private tomb architecture, the role of the Offering Cult and focus on sites of particular significance such as Abydos. The course as a whole provides the students with a comprehensive overview of how the Egyptians – both elite and non-elite – interacted with their Gods, understood their mythology and prepared themselves for Eternity.

 In this course, students examine the contributions of geographers to the theorizing and study of migration. Taking a main focus on Britain and our former colonies to understand migration patterns and processes, there are options to investigate other examples of global migration across the course and assessment. To critically engage with the geographies of migration students draw on theories of post-colonialism and anti-racism strategies, with reflection on ethnicity and religion, and reflect on the important contributions of feminist and intersectional approaches. For instance the course considers the interconnections between areas of Pakistan and Manchester in the textile and garment industry, that continue today. In the second half of the course students deepen their knowledge of key concepts of transnationalism, mobilities, encounter, integration, assimilation, statelessness, citizenship and belonging.  

This course complicates our understanding of North American cities.  It takes us through the histories and geographies of the emergence of the first North American cities.  Both Canada and the US are examples of settler colonialism – where European settlers evicted through violence those on whose land the two nation’s cities were built.  And the labor of slaves from inside and outside of Canada and the US was used to build these cities. The  course builds upon critical understandings of the two nations and their cities. It examines the changing ways in which North American cities have been governed and their changing position in American and Canadian societies, particularly with the emergence of suburbanization from the late 1940s and the gentrification-driven-renaissance of some of their downtown from the late 1980s. 

This course teaches students about the concepts of sustainability and resilience, and the main implications for infrastructure. Students should have a quantitative and qualitative understanding of both present and future challenges that face critical infrastructures (waste, energy, transport, and water). The course develops understanding and skills to compare costs and benefits of different technologies, materials, and managerial approaches that are relevant to the sustainability and resilience of infrastructure. It enables students to understand how decisions about infrastructure systems are made under conditions of complexity and uncertainty. It also enables students to develop professional skills.

This course explores the major themes of Black British history between 1948 and 1990, such as protest, anti-racism, and migration as well as the everyday life of Black communities and neighborhoods from around the UK. Built into the course are three trips to archives based in the North West and Midlands, where students delve into the history of Black communities through the words and perspectives of historical actors. Through recovering, exploring, and being led by the Black voices of the neighborhoods that we encounter, the class build up histories of these communities according to the views of the people who lived in them. In this way, students acquire a rich and multi-faceted understanding of the fabric of Black British history.

The course covers various aspects of biosynthesis and bioenergetics.  The course provides students with important information relevant to understanding the living cell as a chemical reactor, focusing on the chemistry of biosynthesis and bioenergetics underpinning this. The chemistry of key metabolic functions including energy-generating processes such as glycolysis, the citric acid cycle, respiration, photosynthesis as well as aspects regarding control of metabolic flux in the cell are looked at in detail. The course includes a detailed look at information flow and molecular machinery of the cell.