London School of Economics

This course offers an overview of international politics since 1914, providing a factual grounding and surveying the main historiographical debates. Lectures and classes examine the origins, course, and aftermath of the First World War; the Great Depression, appeasement,  the origins of the Second World War in East Asia and Europe; the course and aftermath of the Second World War and the global origins of the Cold War: and aspects of the Cold War world, including decolonization, European integration, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the ‘American war’ in Vietnam, and peaks and troughs of tension between the superpowers. The course also addresses the history of international organizations and of peace movements. It closes with the end of the Cold War and the origins of the Persian Gulf/Iraq wars of 1991 and 2003.

This course explores American foreign policy at the broadest level of analysis – the level known as grand strategy. The course showcases the main theoretical perspectives that inform the study of grand strategy and applies them to historical and contemporary cases of American statecraft. In this connection, students assess the relevance of the U.S. experience for theorizing about power politics and the implications of alternative theories for thinking critically about American international behavior. Emphasis is placed on the debates and controversies that animate the study of grand strategy, as well as of the unique challenges posed by making foreign policy in the American political, economic, and cultural context.

This course covers the economics of discrimination guided by economic theory and evidence. In the first part of the course, students look at some broad stylized facts relating to discrimination in the labor market (both racial and gender) and then explore some of the leading economic theories of the causes and consequences of discrimination, why it tends to persist despite the economic inefficiencies involved, the role for corrective policies, and to the extent the negative effects of discrimination are transmitted inter-generationally. The second part of the course includes the empirical measurement of discrimination, an overview of the economic consequences of racial and gender discrimination, which policies have been implemented to promote equality for underrepresented groups, and examines the relationship between economic inequality and intergenerational mobility. The second part also covers econometric methods used in the literature on the economics of discrimination. 

This course equips early-stage entrepreneurs wishing to start their own venture or work in a start-up with the theoretical frameworks, practical tools, and entrepreneurial mindsets required to identify, design, and launch new ventures—ranging from profit-driven startups to mission-driven social enterprises. Students apply concepts to develop a business pitch based on one of the ideas they generated in class, bridging theory and practice.

The course examines the "general part" of criminal law and selected areas of the special part of criminal law in the context of theories of the aims and functions of criminalization. The course discusses the limits to criminalization; the conceptual framework of criminal liability (conduct, responsibility, capacity, defenses); homicide; sexual offences; non-fatal violence against the person; property offences (with particular reference to theft, fraud, robbery and burglary); secondary participation in crime; inchoate offences; and regulatory offences.

This course provides an introduction to the most commonly used methods for causal inference in the social sciences using observational data. It covers simple and multiple regression (particularly focusing on the conditions for a causal interpretation of the coefficients), matching, panel data, diff-in-diff, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity. The course prioritizes the practical understanding and application of the methods rather than their statistical foundations. Applications are selected from existing research literature.

This course provides an examination of the cultural frameworks and social aspects of gender roles, personhood, human sexuality, and kinship systems, analyzed through ethnographic examples from a diverse range of settings. It equips students with the analytical tools to engage in theoretical debates concerning core concepts such as gender, sexuality, kinship, marriage, and the relationship between nature and culture, as well as exploring how the experiences of gender, sexuality, and kinship vary according to the regimes of politics, law, and materiality in which they are embedded. 

This course covers: introduction to actuarial modelling; the application of compound interest techniques to financial transactions; generalized cash-models to describe financial transactions such as zero-coupon bonds, fixed interest securities, cash on deposit, equities, interest only loans, repayment loans, annuities certain and others; introduction to R programming for Actuarial Science, and introduction to life insurance. 

This course focuses on data about connections, forming structures known as networks. Networks and network data describe an increasingly vast part of the modern world, through connections on social media, communications, financial transactions, and other ties. This course covers the fundamentals of network structures, network data structures, and the analysis and presentation of network data. Students work directly with network data, and structure and analyze these data using the R statistical programming language. This course develops the theory and methodological tools needed to model and predict social networks and use them in social sciences as diverse as sociology, political science, economics, health, psychology, history, or business. The core of the course comprises the essential tools of network analysis, from centrality, homophily, and community detection, to random graphs, network formation, and information flow. 

This course explores how the United States has engaged with the world since 1776. After gaining independence from Britain, the United States looked westward, expanding its territory through indigenous dispossession and a pursuit of hemispheric dominance. By the end of the 19th century, the United States held overseas colonies. Soon thereafter, it became involved in one, and then a second, world war followed shortly by the Cold War and more recently the “forever wars.”  Students think broadly about who has been involved in shaping U.S. foreign relations with the world. They explore decisions made by diplomats and policymakers in Washington as well as the voices of a wide range of people who influenced and resisted U.S. power including missionaries, American Indians, businesspeople, women, workers, and immigrants.