United Kingdom - England

The course explores the nature of civil society and the political role of civil society actors - at local, national, and global levels. Civil society's traditional role as a third sector between the state and the market is critically examined by considering both theories of civil society and empirical case studies of democratic activism and social change. The course covers the contested meaning of "civil society," attending to its historical and cultural variation. Empirical case studies consider a variety of social movements and, where possible, include meetings with activists and other practitioners. The course enables students to critically evaluate the changing role of contemporary civil society and develops a practical understanding of how civil society actors pursue social change, along with why they fail and why they succeed. 

This course develops the knowledge of econometric techniques that are useful in the analysis of financial markets and macroeconomic phenomena.

This course introduces foundational ideas from some of the most exciting and influential thinkers from ancient Greek philosophy. Students begin by looking at several important Pre-Socratic philosophers (such as Parmenides) with a particular focus on their contributions and approaches to epistemology and metaphysics. The course then traces the thread of these debates through to three towering figures of classical Greek philosophy and the western philosophical canon: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

Taught in collaboration with academic staff and theatre practitioners at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, this course aims to take full advantage of the fact that we are able to study Shakespeare’s plays in the city in which they were written and first performed. Through seminars at King’s, and lectures, seminars, workshops and demonstrations at Shakespeare’s Globe, you will learn about the cultural, theatrical, political and social contexts in which plays were produced, and students will explore the extent to which Shakespeare’s plays were shaped by the environments in which he lived and worked. Focusing on the early to middle section of Shakespeare’s career, we will look at a spread of plays from different genres, such as 1 Henry IV, Julius Caesar, Othello, Twelfth Night and Macbeth. In doing so, students will engage with topics such as urban place and space, social status, ideas of history and memory, immigration, race and multiculturalism, gender identity and experience, and topicality, terrorism and state control. Students will also draw on one of the most important Elizabethan works about London, John Stow’s A Survey of London Written in the Year 1598, and the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries such as Chapman, Dekker, Heywood, Jonson, Marston and Munday. 

This course introduces students to the basic concepts of immunology, how the immune system works to fight disease, how its dysfunction can cause disease, and how the immune system can harnessed to treat disease. 

This course uses an active learning approach to link economic tools and insights to real-world policy problems and solutions. This enables students to develop their own skills, knowledge, and experience of the role of economics in policymaking. Students are allocated to study groups, and work together to prepare weekly group presentations on policy case studies. These case studies are discussed in seminars using role play, along with weekly data visualization exercises in Excel. Students build confidence in understanding, analyzing, and producing the materials that are essential to economic policymaking.

Students examine how artists have explored the way in which contemporary galleries and museums function. Since the 1960s artists have adopted the museum as both subject and medium in their artworks. The course examines how such projects impact on our idea of what galleries and museums are, how they operate, and what role they have in public life today. Throughout, key ideas regarding aesthetics, politics, memory, and audience participation are approached by way of specific artworks and exhibitions. 

This course familiarizes students with the way in which science & technology interact with the economy on different scales illustrated by empirical data and introduces them to the notion of engineering production functions and their relation to ordinary production functions and how they are amended by technological progress. The course also introduces students to analyzing scientific progress and Science through knowledge engineering relations and gives them hands-on experience in modeling technological progress in growth models. It gives students insight in science & technology funding and the distinct roles played by private investors and governments, a proper grasp of the key international and national institutions facilitating and/or funding scientific research, an introductory knowledge of how to model networks and the flow of information or other assets through networks.

In this course, students explore children and young people's development from an interdisciplinary perspective. The course takes a holistic and ecological view of developmental trajectories in the context of social relationships. It provides an overview of children and young people's bio-psycho-social, cultural, and emotional development. Students examine the role that relationships with primary carers, significant others, family members, and friends play in that development. Students reflect on key concepts in child and youth development, such as attachment, transition, identity, risk, and resilience. 

How do different actors shape, relate to, sustain or contest the shifting orthodoxies of development? This course is organized as a genealogy of development policy thinking from post-war decolonization onwards. It gives students an essential introduction to the evolution of international development as a global project from its post-World War II origins to the present day. It maps out the key moments (of innovation, crisis, and reinvention) in that evolution and the shifts in thinking that underpin changes in global development agendas/policy.