University College London

This course introduces students to the critical study of global cross-cultural encounters in the early modern period. The course's main materials are Portuguese travel narratives, geographical and ethnographic texts produced between c.1450 and 1650. Students read a selection of translated primary texts narrating travels, encounters, and confrontations with extra-European cultures, accompanied by a selection of secondary literature highlighting the quandaries of the genre’s intertwinements with imperial expansion and the making of colonial societies in Brazil, Africa and Asia. To highlight the unique characteristics of Portuguese travel writing, the course covers the entire globe, but some emphasis is placed on early colonial Brazil, West and South Africa, and the so-called East Indies. 

This course covers in some detail theories and research on issues currently topical in Organizational Psychology from job motivation, leadership and stress to the future of work. The course provides an overview of the theorizing and research in organizational psychology and familiarizes students with the literature on aspects of behavior in the work-place.

What does it mean to study religion anthropologically? This course introduces students to anthropological approaches of studying religion. Students explore how anthropologists have struggled to define religion, and what debates and contestations about definition can tell us about the assumptions of classic anthropological understandings of religion, and how our thinking has changed since. Students explore multiple religious beliefs, meanings, experiences, expressions, and practices across diverse sociocultural environments. Through an engagement with anthropological works on ritual, self-cultivation, and joy, students learn how religion is understood, experienced, and expressed. 

The course provides students with detailed knowledge on advanced construction and building materials used in civil infrastructure, such as sustainability of materials, mechanisms of fracture and failure, fiber reinforced composites, advanced concrete, advanced steel, and advanced engineered wood products. The composition, characteristics, properties, and performance of these materials are introduced in detail, and their availability, cost, and their use in civil engineering are discussed as well, based on which the students develop the ability to make professional decisions about materials selection for civil engineering design within a practical context.

This course furthers the critical study of social, cultural, and historical aspects of performance, through analysis and practical exercises. Students explore plays alongside texts which have shaped approaches to acting and performance, and combine these in practical exercises (e.g. scene studies) and analytic discussion. Drawing from plays both ancient and modern, and stemming from various parts of the globe (e.g. East Asia, India, Ancient Greece, Russia), students explore the purpose and impact of theatre in a wide range of cultural contexts. Why have people gathered to watch drama at various points in time? How have radically different forms of behavior have been understand as ‘natural’ in differing contexts? How has theatre’s relation to democracy or community been understood? 

Students gain fundamental but advanced knowledge in Environmental Fluid Mechanics which goes beyond undergraduate level fluid mechanics. Students acquire analytical and modelling skills to carry out more advanced engineering tasks in the water, coastal, environmental engineering space. Students study physical processes of Fluid Mechanics and develop problem solving skills that are based on a better understanding of the physical mechanisms involved in Fluid Mechanics applications.

In 17th and 18th century Europe, philosophers turned old ways of thinking upside down. “Man” went from being the center of the medieval cosmos to living nowhere special. Philosophers replaced the old Aristotelian world of nested spheres with an austere vision of the universe as an indifferent machine without a center. They stripped value and purpose from nature, along with color and other qualitative properties, reinterpreting many of these phenomena as mere human projections. Claims to knowledge and authority became fragile and suspect. Traditional religious beliefs came under increasing scrutiny as philosophers tried to reconcile belief in the existence of God with the manifest fact of evil in the world. Arguments for the education and equality of women picked up steam. Through these and other developments, a recognizably modern worldview was born. In this course, students will trace one or two philosophical problems—such as problems about the nature of the material world, the mind, skepticism, knowledge, God, human equality, and the problem of evil—through this period, with an eye towards the history of these problem and their lasting philosophical significance.

This course teaches the basic building blocks of radio and podcasting. Students learn how to use recording and editing equipment as well as creative approaches to interviewing and sound design. Though primarily practical, there is an emphasis on learning techniques for telling audio stories through listening and discussion of works produced by audio producers both here in the UK and around the world. Students are expected to pitch, record, and edit a seven-minute documentary. 

This seminar introduces  students to the style, structure, and content of the UCL BSc Psychology program. The seminars develop key academic skills relevant to the range of disciplines that are studied in scientific psychology: including cognition, perception, developmental psychology, neuroscience and health psychology. Students on the course learn academic skills that are required on UCL's program (in particular report and essay writing, and critical assessment of research papers) and which are particular to UK system in general and a British Psychological Society accredited BSc Psychology degree program in particular.

The course gives students an opportunity to revise their survival skills and acquire more sophisticated ways of dealing with practical matters. This includes revision and consolidation of vocabulary, grammar, morphology, syntax, and phonetics. Students learn to converse reasonably fluently with native speakers and discuss personal, social, and current issues using appropriate structures. Cultural awareness is further developed. Language learning skills, including autonomous learning and how to approach authentic material, are enhanced.