University of Sussex

This course looks at some fundamental questions about the purposes of education. This course teaches students to think about the idea that schools are central in reproducing and reinforcing inequalities, such as those associated with social class, race, and gender. This course considers the paradox between the emancipatory aspirations of education and the practical disparities in its outcomes. This course also addresses a series of issues which animate current educational debate in the UK, such as selection by "ability" in grammar schools and universities, the notion of lifelong learning and continual personal development, and the educational "problem" of white working-class boys.

This course is concerned with the application of psychological theory and research to criminological and forensic contexts. Students consider issues such as the following: the reliability of eyewitnesses' accounts of what they have seen and identification of faces they have encountered; why it is that faces of other races are more likely to be misidentified in police line-ups; if people can be recognized reliably from ID cards, passports, and CCTV; issues with current face recall systems; whether children make good reliable witnesses; how it is possible to tell whether someone is lying; why some people become criminals and others do not; and the relationship between mental illness and crime.

Learning from and remembering experiences is critical for survival; failure of the psychobiological mechanisms underlying memory formation and retrieval can have severe and life-changing effects. In this course, students gain knowledge of the neural basis of learning and memory and develop an understanding of how learning and memory are impacted by, or are a feature of, various mental health conditions. Lectures may include the following topics: types of learning and memory; memory formation, persistence, and modulation; memory-related disorders, and corresponding pre-clinical models.

This course focuses on the work of Virginia Woolf, exploring her novels, short stories, essays, diaries, and letters. This course considers Woolf’s responses to the historical upheavals of her period, including the trauma of the First World War, the beginnings of the end of empire, the battle for women’s rights, and the rise of fascism in both Britain and Europe.