London School of Economics

Data science has unlocked exciting possibilities for social scientists through its diverse toolkit, including big data analysis, visualisation, and machine learning models, enabling them to extract valuable insights from their data.  Yet, the success of a data-driven project hinges on data quality. This is where data engineering plays a pivotal role. Professionals must ensure that their acquired data is sufficient and accurate and must be adaptable to handle 'messy data' effectively. A substantial portion of time in data-driven projects (anecdotally 80%) is dedicated to cleaning and pre-processing data, with only 20% said to be devoted to building, evaluating, and deploying machine learning models. Despite the emergence of new AI technologies, which promise to automate many coding tasks, data manipulation is likely to remain an indispensable skill due to the inherent messiness of real-world data. By the end of this course, students will be proficient in producing a website to communicate your collected data and showcase your newly acquired data-wrangling abilities.

How do social divisions and differences shape our identities, actions, and life-chances? This course provides an introduction to key debates in contemporary sociology, examining the forces that drive social stratification and the construction of social identity. In this course, students gain a critical understanding of current research and analysis in the study of social inequalities around class, race, and gender, exploring how sociology helps us to address topical real-world issues. The course centers on the ways in which power relations, patterns of social stratification and inequality, and diverse identities are shaped in contemporary societies – focusing on structural divisions, social movements, and everyday experiences and identities in different international contexts.

This course helps students develop the relevant knowledge and understanding of fixed income instruments and interest rate models. The course provides an overview of the major institutions, organizations, and investors, and it covers both the theoretical background of fixed income markets and its practical implementation. Gaining hands-on experience using real-world examples, students develop the critical thinking and analytical skills to engage in fixed income markets globally.

The course explores food as the essential link between nature and culture, examining how food classification, production, cooking, and eating shape cultural identity, social organization, family and gender systems, and religious practices. By studying practices of commensality, students uncover how food reveals ideas about similarity, difference, politics, religion, and social hierarchies. Students also explore contemporary issues such as how food consumption ties to identity, the obesity epidemic, and the environmental challenges of sustainable food production.

International organizations are created and expected to provide solutions whenever governments face transnational challenges, such as international and civil wars, humanitarian emergencies, flows of refugees, outbreaks of infectious diseases, climate change, financial market instability, sovereign debt crises, trade protectionism, and the development of poorer countries. But their role in world politics is controversial. Some perceive them as effective and legitimate alternatives to unilateral state policies. Others regard them as fig leaves for the exercise of power by dominant states. Others yet are regularly disappointed by the gap between the lofty aspirations and their actual performance in addressing global problems, and want to know the causes of that gap. While some commentators tend to lump all international organizations together, in reality the functioning, power, and effectiveness of international organisations differ widely – across organisations, issues, regions, and over time.

This course examines the causes and consequences of this democratic malaise, encouraging students to consider policies and actions to address these ill winds against modern democratic regimes. The course begins with an introduction to normative and theoretical justifications for democratic governance and by providing a historical and comparative analysis of the state of democracy. From there, it considers threats to the democratic consolidation and causes of democratic backsliding. Topics include multiculturism, immigration, ethnic chauvinism, electoral violence and fraud, corruption, and elite capture. The last part of the course considers ways to protect, improve and consolidate democracy.