United Kingdom - England

This course is about the role played by the public sector in the economy. Students learn how the government should design tax and transfer policies given that agents will likely change their behavior in response. For example, if the government wants to tax workers with high labor incomes to redistribute resources to poorer workers, they should anticipate that workers will reduce hours of work to avoid taxation. So, the more resources are redistributed to pursue an equitable allocation of resources, the lower is the incentive for productive workers to produce resources for redistribution! Students also learn about policies that aim at fixing market failures, such as those preventing markets for health insurance to work efficiently.

This course is based around the rich visual resources of London. Through lectures and visits to monuments and national museums such as Westminster Abbey, the National Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, The British Museum and the Tate Galleries, as well as to local collections such as the Whitechapel Gallery and contemporary art galleries in the East End, students explore the histories of art from the medieval period to the present day by focusing on a selected group of objects, images, or buildings. This allows students to develop skills of visual analysis and provide an understanding of the historical context in which the object or building in question was originally made. At the same time students examine issues of how these objects are presented today, considering the questions of museology, curatorial practice, and the contemporary art market. Topics covered may vary according to exhibitions and temporary displays that are open to the public during the semester.

This course interrogates issues from the perspective of Political Theory and examines the extent to which we are moving to a post-liberal world. Primarily, the course explores whether the claim that we are moving towards a post-liberal world is true. Encompassed within this interrogation, the course looks at real-world political problems and trends that make this trajectory possible, as well as what form a post-liberal world might take, and whether this is desirable. Students are encouraged to argue critically as to whether a post-liberal world is desirable or not and explore the ways through which this might be prevented. This culminates in a critical analysis of how liberal theory could be re-imagined or justified to respond to modern world issues.

The course introduces students to different types and sources of pollution and their distribution and control methods, and students explore risk assessment strategies and the source-pathway-receptor framework to assess their risks to human and environmental health.

The course offers an historical overview of the development of post-classical sociological theory such as functionalism, interactionism, and postmodernism, via an exploration of the work of a selection of key sociological theorists such as Talcott Parsons, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Jurgen Habermas, Judith Butler, Ulrich Beck, and Manuel Castells. Key concepts developed by these thinkers are explored in relation to the themes of structure and agency, culture/ideology, and sociological understanding.

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to analytic political theory from the 1970s to the present day, with a focus on leading liberal theorists and their critics. It does so via a discussion of normative theorising around key topics and themes, and shows how these theories bear on various applied questions. 

In this course students learn about the atmosphere, ocean, and land components of the carbon cycle. The course covers global issues such as ocean acidification and how to get off our fossil fuel "addiction," as well as how to deal with climate change denialists.

This course explores the theories and concepts drawn from research in marketing psychology and how these shed light on consumers' motivations and behaviors. It examines fundamental processes in consumer behavior, such as decision-making, perception, learning, memory, the self, attitudes, and persuasion. It investigates the extent to which these processes are influenced by individual, situational, environmental, inter-personal, and cultural (sub-cultural) factors. Through a focus on contemporary issues in consumer behavior, and the challenges these may pose to marketing managers, students apply conceptual and theoretical ideas in marketing psychology and to analyze, evaluate, and improve, marketing strategies. Students reflect and critically evaluate their own behaviors as consumers.

This course studies a range of key historical problems and conceptual questions relating to the colonial and postcolonial experience. Focus is placed on the characteristics of capitalism, imperialism, and modernity, and students also examine the making of the modern world. Students gain an overview of European expansion, the slave economy, the development of wage labor, industrial growth, imperialism, creation of the modern state, genocide, development, anti-colonialism, and the creation of the “third world.” Students are exposed to a long-term, historical view within which the material of subsequent development studies courses may be usefully contextualized. Assessment is based fully on a final essay.

This course covers theoretical anthropological approaches to the study of capitalism, from early accounts of the market versus other economic forms, to recent works on salvage economies and forms of financialization. Drawing on thinkers such as Gibson-Graham, Laura Bear, Anna Tsing, Andrea Muehlebach and Evans and Reid, it critically engages with ideas about neoliberalism, diverse (or alternative) economies, nepotism, austerity, performativity and prefiguration, and the way in which "capitalocentrism" obfuscates space for critical thought.