United Kingdom - England

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. 

This course addresses key developments in contemporary digital culture. It focuses on how still and moving images, and art and visual culture in general change with the triumph of big data analytics and artificial intelligence. The course is structured around concepts key to such developments, such as the user and viewer, body and affect, (social) platform and metrics, interface and interaction, city and infrastructure, ecology and nature. 
 

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.

This class consists of an extended laboratory, over 10 weeks, to investigate how a particular processing parameter influences the structure, properties and performance of a material. Each group of students is asked to determine the processing parameters that optimizes the performance of a material for a particular application. Students design and perform a systematic series of experiments to meet the objective, each student produces an individual report on the investigation. 

The course develops the tools required for the application of new energy and renewable energy systems to the problems faced by climate change and global energy security while transitioning to a zero emissions economy. The focus is on the application of materials for the development of new energy recovery systems such as nanostructured surfaces for solar harvesting, solar fuels, batteries/capacitors, and fuel cells/electrolysers. Biomass as a potential alternative to clean energy is also discussed along with its different scenarios and the associated advantages and risks. 

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 teaches students how to collect and handle date in a hands-on manner. The first few weeks of the course cover theoretical concepts through traditional lectures, but then the format shifts to a practical approach. Live coding demonstrations are used to guide students through the material, which can be followed in real-time. Python is the primary programming language used in staff-led lectures and classes, but students are also permitted to use R for their assignments if they prefer.

The course teaches students a thorough understanding of high-performance and energy-efficient computer architecture. Students learn principles and techniques for evaluating architectural proposals, explore how knowledge of computer architecture informs software performance engineering, and gain a deep understanding of topical trends in advanced computer architecture, compiler design, operating systems, and parallel processing

The course introduces the students to the concept of sustainable energy and the main renewable energy resources. Those covered in the course are geothermal, hydro, wind, solar, and marine energy, the emphasis being on geothermal energy. The current and potential use of these energy resources for producing electricity and space heating are discussed, with application to the UK where appropriate. The focus is on current and future use of these resources, as well as on quantitative aspects and understanding some of the relevant physics. The module covers the basic concepts of energy science, including conservation of energy, basic thermodynamic concepts, energy efficiency, and related topics presented at an elementary (easily understood) level. An emphasis is on the ideal combination between geothermal energy (which is a steady source – always there) and other but non-steady renewable sources (e.g., solar and wind energy).

This course considers how we understand and explain the difference between things with minds and things without. This is the central question of the metaphysics of mind. Increasingly, philosophers who engage with this question aim to give a naturalist account of the mind: one that fits into the picture of the world offered to us by the sciences. But many features of the mind – including, in particular, conscious experience – fit uneasily into this naturalistic world view. This course familiarizes students with the key debates in this area.