University College London

In this introductory course, students study the mechanisms of the UK constitution and experience of understanding and applying legal texts, including landmark cases and statutes. They learn about the institutions of legislating and decision-making in the UK, the rule of law, and the judicial protection of the rule of law, alongside a specialist topic reflecting topical current research experience from UCL’s Faculty of Laws, such as environmental law, law and democracy, or social welfare law. This course provides a taster of legal education at university level, which at UCL Laws focuses on how world-leading research and a deeply inclusive law school can support a strong social mission and a set of values centered around the concept of justice: particularly the rule of law, the protection of human rights, and constitutional democracy.

Made from the stuff of dreams and nightmares, "the fantastic" in literature poses questions about the nature of reality in a changing world. As science transformed understanding of life in the 18th and 19th centuries, literature placed fears and hopes for the future alongside the oldest beliefs and superstitions, creating a new genre of the fantastic, a modern world of monsters and phantoms where nothing is quite what it seems. This course explores the development of the supernatural and fantastic in European literature from fairytales to science fiction, and examines contemporary resonances, including the enduring appeal of a Hollywood monster and a cult internet meme.

In this course, lectures are delivered by research-leaders in evolutionary cell biology, genetics, molecular cell biology, and ageing to provide a comprehensive understanding of cell function at the level of genome organization, gene regulation, proteome management, metabolic homeostasis and adaptive responses across different cell types and organisms (bacteria, archaea, fungi, plants, worms, planaria, tardigrades, fish, rodents and humans). By focusing on these areas of cell biology, the course then examines the similarities and differences in cell function across domains, kingdoms and species by discussing: 1) the cell biology behind specializations in cell function, 2) differences in the biology behind plant and animal cells, 3) the evolution of cell-type specificity and multicellular species, 4) organism-specific adaptive responses and 5) changes in function between young and old cells. In addition, students have the opportunity to conduct an independent mini research project in which they contribute to a real-world ongoing experiment aimed at understanding how cells respond to the presence of toxic proteins. 

This course provides students with a distinctly anthropological perspective on social media. It explores how familiar themes in anthropology, from kinship and friendship networks to the relation between circulation and value, take on new forms in a world of ever-increasing social media connectivity. Combining insights from anthropology and social media studies, students will consider questions such as: Is culture becoming more homogeneous now that more than one billion people worldwide have a Facebook profile, or are there as many different Facebooks as there are local contexts? How does the circulation of online content relate to pre-existing forms of community and belonging? What are the links between algorithms and agency? Are selfies a symptom of increasing individualism? And how can ethnographic methods capture social worlds of infinite distraction, endlessly interrupted by notifications, memes, tweets and Instagram stories?

This course examines the fate of the later Roman empire from the fall of Rome through the establishment of the barbarian kingdoms in the west and the rise of Constantinople in the East to the eve of the Arab conquests (AD400-700), interrogating models of decline, catastrophe, and transformation through the most recent archaeology. There is, however, much more to the study of the late antique world than the problem of how and why the Roman empire collapsed. The course explores key themes such as decline and fall, barbarians and ethnicity, urbanism, rural settlement, Christianization, the army and the economy and compare the different trajectories of Europe, Northern Africa, and the Eastern Mediterranean in this period.

In this course students are introduced to the anthropological study of kinship, with an added focus on gender given the close relationship between the two. The study of kinship has been foundational in social anthropology, and early anthropologists often sought to categorize and rank societies according to their kinship system. Since then, the study of kinship has moved considerably from charting "systems" to understanding the full complexity of concepts and practices of relatedness, and even questioning the universality of "kinship." While acknowledging the historical foundations of the field, this course focuses on more contemporary aspects of the study of kinship and gender. Questions about race and ethnicity also figure prominently throughout the course. Through ethnographic examples from a wide range of social contexts, students reflect on the socially constructed nature of ideas of kinship and gender and debate key social issues of contemporary relevance.