United Kingdom - England

Climate Intervention describes a set of ideas to cool the planet by increasing the amount of light the Earth reflects. The leading proposal is Stratospheric Aerosol Injection, an idea which aims to mimic the cooling effect of major volcanic eruptions, which research suggests would be fast, cheap, and imperfect. This idea offers the potential to arrest global warming and potentially greatly reduce the risks of climate change but presents a host of challenges, risks, and ethical questions. We could stop climate change early, but should we? This course provides students with the context to understand this controversial, emerging issue, the space to develop an informed opinion, and to develop the skills to express their view persuasively. 

This survey course is an introduction to the history of Latin America in the 20th century. Students examine processes common to the region, the experiences of specific countries, and Latin America’s relations with the rest of the world. Beyond this, like Hobsbawm, the course considers how Latin America can help us think about the history of wider world.

This course introduces students to a range of problems, positions, and arguments in the philosophy of mind - the philosophical study of mental phenomena and their relation to the rest of reality. The first half of term focuses on the mind-body problem - in particular the Problem of Consciousness. The theme for the second half of term is Self and Other - Where am I? Where is my mind? Can I know the minds of others? 

The course surveys the fairy tale in English from the 17th to the 21st century. Students survey the first translations of fairy tales into English by the Grimms, Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen – and explore the context of the huge popularity of these tales. Students investigate their early reception and influence, including on novels and tales written in English, before moving on to 20th and 21st century rewritings. Students also spend time on film adaptations and book illustrations. Detailed consideration is given to a range of critical approaches including psychoanalytical and feminist readings, and the classification of fairy tale plots. Close readings, comparing the language and emphasis of different versions of the same story, is also central to the course.

This course introduces and critically discusses an area of special interest to applied psychologists, namely, psychology as applied to health behavior. The course covers the central models and evidence bases concerning the relationship between psychological processes and health and illness. Topics include health promotion and public health; health behavior models; illness maintenance and treatment adherence; chronic illness; and health through the lifespan.

This course explores television programming in relation to its production and cultural contexts, initially by comparing the vision and practice of early British television (in the so-called Golden Age of the 1950s/60s) with the present complexities of the international television industry and contemporary consumer culture. Students also consider how commissioning decisions are made, and how notions of "quality" and expectations of public service shift in an increasingly plural environment that includes non-broadcast provision of television programming. Lectures and seminars are supplemented by screenings of a range of programs that may be seen to reflect the broader contextual changes of industry, markets, and the public sphere. Students deepen their understanding of practical creative decision making at various levels of the broadcasting industry by researching broadcaster requirements and working on commercially viable group TV program proposals to be presented/submitted at the end of the course.

The course introduces students to both the academic and practical aspects of traditional and digital methods of archaeological illustrations including finds drawing. The academic aspects concentrate on types of technique, style, materials and equipment used, and the layout and presentation of drawings for publication. The practical work involves the creation and preparation of drawings to a publication standard (resulting in an assessed portfolio). The artefact illustration sessions concentrate on the drawing of flintwork, pottery, and metalwork for both hand inking and digital presentation. The digital element of the course includes the use of Adobe Illustrator to create artefact, site location, and historic map illustrations as well as addressing the use of computer aided design (CAD software) in archaeological site planning and the principles and conventions of image-editing using Adobe Photoshop. Students are taught to analyze archaeological illustrations and consider their effectiveness in communicating archaeological data. 

In this course, students take a step back and explore what it means to perceive particular situations in terms of “crisis.” Students focus on emergency interventions and examine how sustainable these interventions are. The course investigates to what extent these interventions have changed the very meaning of “health.” A particular focus in our discussions is on the category of crisis itself. How is the category operating today in particular contexts? How is it mobilized and what are its effects? To what extent might the category of crisis enable or disable distinctive forms of intervention? What accounts for the productivity of crisis in contemporary debates about the health and well-being of populations, both in the global North and the global South? What are the analytical and political limits of “crisis” as a category of thought and action in contemporary global health and social medicine?  

Audiences could not get enough of the best-selling stories of bigamy, madness, and murder known as the sensation novel. This course considers the Sensation Mania of the 1860s as a literary, historical, and psychological phenomenon reflecting many of the cultural anxieties of Victorian society. To this end, students examine how a variety of sensation narratives participated in contemporary debates over sexuality and provided alternate ways of thinking about identity. Texts to be covered include the key novels to establish the genre of sensation fiction.

The course explains the basic concepts, techniques, and uses of modern molecular biology techniques. Practical sessions and associated tutorials give hands-on experience of molecular techniques including electrophoresis, sequencing, cloning, and the polymerase chain reaction. The course begins with lectures that introduce molecular biology concepts, or serve as a refresher for students who already have some experience. It then moves into a description of contemporary tools and then applications. Lecturers explain some of the diverse applications of these techniques, with reference to their own research in fields including metagenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, cell and developmental biology, and forensic anthropology.