University of Manchester

This course introduces the discipline of psychology as it applies to the study of crime and criminal justice; explores the contribution of psychology to the explanation, prediction, and reduction of crime; critically appreciates the strengths and limitations of the featured approaches and literature; and develops transferable communications and metacognitive skills.

This course takes a geographical approach to some of the world’s most complex moral issues. It gives students the chance to explore a range of moral questions from a geographical perspective. Arguably a geographical perspective, which embraces knowledge from other disciplines and not only its own, is well-placed to "join the dots" and grapple with the complexity of the world as it is, not how we want it to be. It explores these complex issues using a multi-scalar, place-sensitive approach, embracing not only key geographical thinkers, but also philosophers, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and economists. 

In this course, students explore the origins of Western philosophy by examining the thoughts and ideas of ancient Greek thinkers. In the first part of the course, the main ideas and theories of pre-Socratic philosophers regarding the natures of reality, soul, and knowledge are  discussed. During the next two parts of the course, the main ideas of Plato and Aristotle are discussed in more detail. Through analysis of some of their major works, students examine their views on some of the most important issues in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Most of the reading materials of the course are from primary sources whose translations are available in English.

Picasso is the most densely inscribed artist of the 20th century, a key figure in histories of modernism and the avant-garde. This course tracks his production across narratives of art, culture and ideology, placing it in historical and theoretical contexts, while attending to the themes and fictions of the reception. Notwithstanding Picasso’s continuing recuperation as an institution or brand-name, his practice submitted the European world-picture to an unprecedented interrogation. This course brings this radical questioning of identity and meaning to the fore.

This course familiarizes students with the themes and history from late imperial (1842–1911) to republican (1912–1949) and Communist China (1949–). The course provides the major events and history makers, but not at the cost of micro history as it pays great attention to ordinary people and their lives. The course examines change, but change came in the shape of continuity, considering how a better understanding of China’s transformation from the “sick man of Asia” to economic superpower helps us better understand the making of the modern world.

This course explores the creation, evolution, and subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union, as well as the emergence of a new Russia from the wreckage of the world’s first socialist state. Emphasis is placed on key political, social, and cultural developments, seen within the context of Soviet, post-Soviet and, more broadly, European history.

This course provides students with a comprehensive overview of the history and culture of Pharaonic Egypt from the Neolithic and the formation of the Egyptian state at the end of the Predynastic through to the arrival of Alexander the Great and the incorporation of Egypt into the Hellenistic World. Alongside the historical overview, students study aspects of Pharaonic culture such as royal iconography, mortuary, and sacred landscapes as well as modern reception of the Egyptian civilization in a series of seminars built around specific textual sources or scholarly articles providing a starting point for discussion and debate.