United Kingdom - England

This course examines how economies can be supported to grow and develop. Growth and development are not synonymous. Economic growth aims to increase a country’s national income. Development aims to generate positive qualitative changes. However, both indicators are continuous processes affecting a country’s welfare and social progress.

This course explores the emergence and key concepts of the global market for art from the 18th to the 21st centuries through a discussion of its history, disruptions, and innovations. The course takes a thematic approach delivered via specific case studies to map the key concepts, individuals and institutions, and the various business models, and ethical and legal considerations that underpin the contemporary market. Students gain an understanding of the globalized art market economy through a comparative study of different geographical market regions across time, including the emergence of new global art market centers and the rise of the millennial collector. Throughout, the auction house and the unique behind-the-scenes access afforded to students of Sotheby’s Institute of Art, provides a detailed and practical case study of the history, development, and future of this market.

This course explores the ethics of artificial intelligence in the context of autonomous technologies that involve the transfer of control and governance from human beings to robots and other intelligence systems. Normative and behavioral theories of ethics are used to explore the implications of artificial intelligence in the areas of liability associated with ownership of AI, agency and privacy, biases, malicious and harmful use of AI, and the rights of artificially intelligent beings. 

This course explores the debates and social research evidence around personal relationships in contemporary society. The course mainly draws on sociological and anthropological scholarship. Students learn about the interplay between intimate life and social organization, to understand better how wider social forces shape the most personal of experiences. Drawing on scholarship from across the globe, the course explores how intimacy and love differ across the cultural, socio-economic, and political contexts in which individuals live. The course explores different kinds of intimate relationships, whether romantic, family, or friendship based. Sexuality is explored as a practice of intimacy. 

The first part of the course focuses on the foundations of public economics. The course introduces classical theories concerning equity, efficiency, and the rationales for government intervention in the economy. Students discuss market failure in the context of public goods and externalities, including environmental policy. They also discuss problems of public choice and political economics, and the implications of recent research in behavioral economics for policymaking. Students also study modern empirical methods that are used to evaluate the causal effects of public policies. The second part of the fall term considers social insurance policies, including unemployment insurance, disability insurance, retirement pensions, and public health insurance. Students study the economic rationale for government intervention in social insurance and the optimal type and extent of interventions, and they relate this to empirical evidence on the causal effects of changes in social insurance policies. In the spring term, the course is devoted to tax and transfer programs. The course begins by examining the incentive effects of taxes and transfers on labor supply, and then goes on to consider migration, tax avoidance, and tax evasion. As inequality is a key input to tax and transfer policy, we critically examine the measurement of and trends over time in income and wealth inequality in various countries. We look at the effect of taxation on economic efficiency and explore the optimal taxation of commodities and income. Finally, we consider questions of tax administration and apply them in a developing country context.

This course focuses on ethical and philosophical approaches to democracy. It introduces students to major theories of democracy, as well as major critiques of democracy. 

The course familiarizes students with theoretical perspectives that explain the emergence and change of modern welfare states. To this end, the course typically outlines the development of European welfare states, and discusses the emergence of different types of welfare states. The course usually covers core theoretical approaches to understand welfare state politics, which may include economic models of inequality and redistribution, party politics and public opinion, the influence of political institutions, and the role of immigration, race, and gender. The course may also include case studies of specific policy fields or social policy reforms, such as the Universal Credit reforms in the United Kingdom. Students learn a set of theoretical tools that help them understand past, present, and future debates about social policy and the welfare state, and evaluate social policies in a comparative perspective.

This course looks at some of the varieties of independent cinema that have emerged from America since the early 1980s. Films by directors such as John Waters, Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, Spike Lee, Todd Haynes, Lisa Cholodenko, and Richard Linklater, are examined both within the context of their cinematic precursors and influences, and the wider social and institutional circumstances that helped to create audiences for them.

This course explores urban policy issues through a focus on the intersections between population, housing, and neighborhood dynamics across the Global North. The course considers a number of intriguing policy relevant questions about residential geographies. These include but are not limited to: Why do people live where they do? How does the housing system shape how people move through, experience, and use urban space? What makes urban populations change over time, how can we measure and perhaps influence these dynamics, and how useful are terms such as segregation or gentrification for describing processes of neighborhood change? How is housing provided and regulated in different contexts, and what does this mean for cities and for people's lives?

This course explores the major themes of Black British history between 1948 and 1990, such as protest, anti-racism, and migration as well as the everyday life of Black communities and neighborhoods from around the UK. Built into the course are three trips to archives based in the North West and Midlands, where students delve into the history of Black communities through the words and perspectives of historical actors. Through recovering, exploring, and being led by the Black voices of the neighborhoods that we encounter, the class build up histories of these communities according to the views of the people who lived in them. In this way, students acquire a rich and multi-faceted understanding of the fabric of Black British history.