United Kingdom - England

Throughout this course, the class reflects on individuals and cultures that have at one time been considered (and are sometimes happy to be considered) aberrant, not “normal”. The course balances questions of identity (who we are, who we think we are, who others think we are) with questions of desire and sexual aim (who – or what – we are attracted to, if anything). This course asks students to focus on one question throughout: should we understand ourselves, and be understood in turn, as sexual and gendered identities; “straight”, “queer”, “female”, “heterosexual”, etc., or by our attachments; who we love, who we desire?

Emphasis is be placed on works from Britain or from the British post-colonial diaspora and students examine mediums including literature, art, and film.

Through lectures/seminars, students will explore the ways in which philosophers have sought to understood and respond to the demands of Christian faith from both within and without that faith.Students will explore the social and psychological context of such faith, and the ways in which one might understand Christian notions of love, purity, devotion and sainthood, amongst others. Students will explore the ways in which some thinkers have seen Christianity as deepening our sense of the human condition whilst others have seen Christianity as degrading of our condition. The course is text based as, in this context, this is one of the best ways in which students can come to a deepened intellectual understanding of the matters under consideration.

The primary focus of this course is on the core machine learning techniques in the context of high-dimensional or large datasets (i.e. big data). The first part of the course covers elementary and important statistical methods including nearest neighbors, linear regression, logistic regression, regularization, cross-validation, and variable selection. The second part of the course deals with more advanced machine learning methods including regression and classification trees, random forests, bagging, boosting, deep neural networks, k-means clustering and hierarchical clustering. The course will also introduce causal inference motivated by analogy between double machine learning and two-stage least squares. All the topics are delivered using illustrative real data examples. Students also gain hands-on experience using R or Python (programming languages and software environments for data analysis, computing and visualization).

This course covers the following: 1. study of 20th-century British literature (prose, poetry, and drama) in its socio-political context; study of individual authors (in weekly lectures) 2. study of major cultural themes running through the century, e.g., literature of war; imperialism; feminism; modernism; postmodernism; political writing, 3. several trips to theatre productions during the year, 4. extensive use of archive recordings of authors, and video.

This course provides students with a thorough understanding of the functioning of financial markets. It covers topics such as the role of markets and institutions as providers of liquidity, the reasons for price volatility in financial markets, financial fragility, different types of market microstructure, and informational efficiency of financial markets.

This course explores the fundamental environmental units: ecosystems. Students use biological and physical science perspectives to examine the geographical distribution of ecosystems and to understand the principles and processes governing their structure and function. Students study the exchange of materials and energy between biotic and abiotic ecosystem components, focusing on water and carbon cycles. Students apply biogeoscience perspectives when interpreting how ecosystems change in response to internal system processes, environmental change, natural disturbance events and human activities.

Microbes, extremely diverse both in form and in function, play a critical role in the global ecosystem. Students explore how these organisms evolved from more primitive lifeforms to colonize new environmental niches. Students study their interactions with plants, animals, and insects and how they impact on our everyday lives.

In this course, students are introduced to and practice three specific psychological skills, choosing two skills from a suite of optional skills, alongside a third compulsory skill (learning to carry out a literature search).  

This course discusses some central empirical and theoretical questions in the field. It begins by examining classic comparative debates about the relationship between the development of states and nations on the one hand, and the rise of capitalism and democracy on the other. The course examines the impact that social cleavages have on parties, elections and other political institutions in a number of different countries. It also examines the strength and political impact of both labor movements and other important social movements. Additionally, the course examines why similar countries can develop very different social and economic policies. In addition students examine some of the founding writings of Marx and Weber and critically assess the use of political concepts. Throughout the course students consider some of the main theoretical approaches that are used in the study of political sociology.

Topics include (1) why modern psychology requires an understanding of neuroscience; (2) neuronal structure, function and information transmission; (3) the organization of the nervous system and how this reflects some principles of information processing; (4) methods used to study structure and information processing in the brain; (5) functional architectures in the brain; (6) the neural basis of learning; (7) brain evolution; and (8) the biology and psychopharmacology of reward, reinforcement, and psychological disorders.