University of London, Queen Mary

The course focuses on the structure and dynamics of a variety of networks (e.g., the World Wide Web, online social networks, collaboration networks). It uncovers the network foundations of innovation, information diffusion, cultural fads, financial crises, and viral marketing. Special emphasis is placed on the hub-dominated "scale-free"" networks and the "small-world" networks showing the "six degree of separation" phenomenon. The course combines current research on social networks with contributions from relevant organizational and sociological literature.

In this course, students gain in-depth knowledge and understanding of contemporary change in the UK. Key themes to be addressed in seminar discussion include neo-liberalism, the North-South divide, culture-led urban regeneration, urban heritage and identity, migration, and urban health. 

The course introduces students to the key processes concerned with the management of people within organizations. It is pitched at non-specialist level, so it explores concepts, procedures, and regulations that any manager with direct reports is likely to need to know in order to effectively handle their staff.

The course examines the meanings produced by costume in theatre, and film and fashion in the media and everyday life. It explores the relationship between clothing and performance historically and today. It considers how costume and fashion construct class, gender identity and sexual identity, and race. It interrogates the fashion industry's relationship with colonial histories and with questions of ecology and sustainability. It offers students the opportunity to create a costume design portfolio and to bring their own interests in costume and fashion into conversation with theoretical questions of subjectivity.

This course focuses on three German-language thinkers of global influence: Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. Students encounter some of the main ideas of each thinker, including the understanding of history as class struggle (Marx), the philosophy of language and the death of God (Nietzsche), and the idea of the unconscious (Freud). Further thinkers working in these traditions (for example: Rosa Luxemburg, Sarah Kofman, Herbert Marcuse, Melanie Klein, Erich Fromm) may also be considered. German studies students study the German-language texts in the original language.

This course explores how economic theory can help us to design and evaluate public policy. The main focus of the course is to study basic notions, models, and results of public economics. Primary attention is given to the expenditure side of the economy, especially to externalities, public goods, social choice, and local public goods. The course takes examples from environmental and tax policy as well as the analysis of projects and inequality. Students take a modern microeconomics approach to tackle inefficiency problems in public economics.

This course focuses on the role of the government in the economy. It provides an understanding of the reasons for government intervention in the economy, analyzing the benefits of possible government policies, and the response of economic agents to the government's actions. The course covers social insurance and tax policy, and related issues, such as inequality and budget deficits.

This course introduces students to the study of how states make foreign policy decisions. It considers the social, material, institutional, and political contexts for decision-making, and how individual leaders' cognitive and psychological traits influence the choices they make. It thus forms a bridge between the study of leadership, domestic politics, and international relations.

This course explores the turbulent development of the United States from its inception in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence through to its ascendance as an industrial and imperial world power in 1896. Students explore the history of this young nation from the writing of the Constitution, through contests over democracy, slavery and the Civil War, to an era of mass immigration and industrial capitalism. Throughout the module our studies will be guided by four themes which were central to the building of an American nation and which continue to divide opinion today: expansion, race, capitalism, and democracy. Students gain an understanding of different approaches to studying American history and demonstrate an ability to marshal historical knowledge to make a convincing case in favor of their own critical interpretation of the past.

This course examines the history of Palestine and the people who lived in it, from the spread of Christianity, through the Islamic period, and until the beginning of Western domination in the 19th century. The story of the land is told from the bottom up, focusing on peasants and the urban non-elites, and to encompass the diversity of the ethnic and religious groups who made Palestine their home.

Through a detailed examination of a number of recent and contemporary French films, this course fosters an understanding of the network of forces that have shaped French film production since major changes to cultural policy were implemented in France by the socialist Mitterrand administration in 1981. Students profile some of the ways in which French cinema reflects and interacts with French culture and society, and evaluate this in the light of social, political, and cultural shifts in late 20th and 21st century French life. The course is research-based and requires a significant commitment to independent study.