United Kingdom - England

Through this course, students gain access to research-led lectures and the latest scholarship to properly understand how digital platforms work and the roles they play in society. Students apply this knowledge to case studies to understand how platforms are shaped and where citizens might intervene in their governance. Students engage in debates to think about how to critically engage with technological power and to mitigate the social harms of platforms.

This course examines moral arguments relating to the functioning of markets; considers the different ways in which the use of markets may, in general terms, be justified or criticized; introduces students to a range of normative perspectives on the operation and appropriate extent of markets, and demonstrate how such ideas are deployed in political debate; and provides a detailed assessment of a number of specifically troubling areas of exchange. 

This course explores the practices and techniques related to both script adaptation and original scriptwriting. Their inter-relationship is an important step for students wishing to establish their scriptwriting skills above a foundation level. Both types of scriptwriting are given equal weight as topics and assessed accordingly. Students gain the ability to adapt a pre-existing text (a prose short story) into a film script; an understanding of the practice and techniques of script adaptation; the ability to write an original script that is not based on a pre-existent script; an understanding of the skills and techniques required for original scriptwriting; and the ability to work the format and discipline of scriptwriting to a suitable level.

On this course, students explore global history from a “global south” perspective, examining processes of global interaction from the perspective of societies in the majority world: Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Following introductory topics on the theories and methodologies of global history, students look at case studies from various regions as examples of how societies in the global south have shaped and experienced processes of global integration.

The course commences with an overview of contemporary CC/EC discourses, debates, the evidential base and international governance initiatives to address the challenge, including IPCC reports, UNFCCC and Stern, as well as regional and national-scale reports. It then examines the nature of urbanism and urbanization as linked networks and systems of urban areas embedded within multiscalar hinterlands. This provides the context for detailed examination of how urbanization and urbanism contribute to CC/EC; how CC/EC is affecting, and is predicted to affect, towns and cities in different regions, and how urban authorities and diverse groups of urban residents experience, perceive and respond to the phenomenon. Key concepts and literatures assessed include disaster risk, vulnerability, resilience, mitigation, adaptation, transformation, global(ized) urbanism and teleconnections, and the claimed conflict between tackling climate change and meeting immediate development needs.

Students taking this course learn about the history, theory, and practice of decolonization. This includes a critical look at decolonization versus decolonial thinking in practice, including the institutionalization of calls to ‘decolonize’ which seek finalized end points rather than ongoing modes of decolonial critique. Students undertake specialized study through examples and case studies which may include topics such as decolonizing history, heritage, public history and museums, decolonizing universities, curricula and education, decolonizing environmental activism, art and art history, literature and public spaces.

This course gives students an understanding of the fundamental science governing the electronic and ionic conductivity of metal oxides and to then use this knowledge to describe the operation of devices based on these properties, such as gas sensors, fuel cells, batteries, varistors, and PTCRs.

This course covers amino acids, the fundamentals of protein structure, isolation and purification of proteins, modification of proteins, and methods of determining protein conformation. It also covers the basics of enzyme catalysis and kinetics with specific case studies. Other topics include ion transport, and other transport proteins, and the utilization of proteins and soluble cofactors to generate and store metabolic energy. Students learn the basics of metabolism in glycolysis and the citric acid cycle, as well as ATP synthesis and membrane bound electron transfer in mitochondria. Chloroplasts in plants and algae, and molecular motors, such as muscles, that consume metabolic energy are also covered. 

This course covers theories and processes of contemporary urban development from a critical political economy perspective, addressing urban problems and policy responses in our rapidly urbanizing world. The course examines what urbanization means to the state, to (global/domestic) businesses, and ordinary citizens, focusing on a selected set of key themes that are pertinent to the understanding of urban injustice. Such themes may include, but are not limited to, the understanding of the (social) production of unequal urban space, global circulations of urbanism, gentrification, displacement, and dispossession. Case studies are largely drawn from a diverse range of cities across the world, providing opportunities for students to contest urban theories that have largely been rooted in the experiences of the advanced economies.