University College London

This introductory course deals with changes in our physical and biological environment on a variety of timescales, looks into the causes of natural environmental change and examines the progressive environmental impact of people from the last glacial stage up to the present. This course aims to place present-day environmental issues such as climate change, evolution, biodiversity and human-environment interactions in a long-term temporal perspective, arguing that an understanding of the present and prediction of the future both require an examination of the past.

This course covers Ancient Israel from its cradle to the beginning of the common era, ending with Qumran. It covers the theories about the origins of Israel, including the exodus from Egypt, against the socio-political background of Ancient Israel with due attention to historiography. The succession and successes of various royals are covered, as well as the activity of the prophets in a comparative perspective. Cultic practices throughout the period are discussed.

This course investigates Roman politics through the lens of classical political theory, applying ideas about liberty, citizenship, equality, and form of government to the real political practices of the Romans of the first century BC. The course commences with a survey of the everyday political environment of first-century Rome, which provides the context for an in-depth analysis of republican ideology. The course then explores the political thought of influential ancient authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero, before examining the ways in which the image of the Roman Republic and its associated political ideology have been constructed and applied in political theory across the centuries, tracing their metamorphosis in the writings of Machiavelli, 17th-century English republicans, the defenders of the American constitution, and the French Enlightenment.

This course provides the necessary knowledge and skills to enable a student to understand the nature and characteristics of financial planning in the context of entrepreneurship. This involves the understanding of the key financial statements (profit & loss, balance sheet and cash flow), the financial planning process, the financial risks/rewards of entrepreneurship and innovation, new venture financial models and strategies, typical funding sources, the development of business presentations to attract outside funding, the due diligence process, and the strategies for negotiations for funding.

In this course, students view and discuss films that are widely recognized as outstanding or innovative and place them in a European and global context through the framework of manipulating, constructing, and regaining memory. At the same time, the course provides a critical and theoretical introduction to film analysis focusing on narrative form, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound while providing students with analytical tools needed to interpret and write about films by identifying the elements of film art and the terminology to discuss film techniques.

The key goal of this course is to appreciate different "modes" and "lenses" of urban thinking and their relationship with urban policy practice, and to understand how to source and interpret different types of urban expertise in relation to complex urban challenges.  Whilst cities have in the past years been an exciting locus of experimentation, and the promises of the "smart city" agenda as well as a city gender lens have fast risen to wide popularity in urban research and policy, there remain many areas in which complex urban challenges test our contemporary understanding of the "urban age." The course engages with urban change-makers working across academic research (in UCL and beyond) and public and private sector institutions. 

This course is about political, social, cultural, and economic change in the Benelux-countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) from the inter-war period to the present. Among the themes covered are the crisis of democracy in the 1930s; collaboration, resistance and accommodation during the German occupation of World War II; decolonization; Dutch, Belgian, and Luxembourgian post-war politics; the Cold War and European integration; development of the modern welfare state; cultural revolution and new social movements in the 1960s; linguistic and inter-communal tensions and federalization of Belgium; immigration, the polder-model, the "crisis of multiculturalism," and the recent rise of populism in the Netherlands.

This course explores the diverse roles that money and finance have played across time and space, and the roles that we want them to play. Students explore debates about debt and democracy – from geographies of offshore tax and state financing, to the use of financial assets and property investment as the basis for social welfare. Students consider geographies of finance and development, including inequalities and inclusion in the global north, efforts to create more ethical and postcolonial approaches to finance, and the rapidly changing landscape of fintech. Themes may vary.

This course attempts to ground the analysis of human movement by focusing on the specific historical, sociological, economic, political, and cultural impact of migration from the "migrant's point of view." Accordingly, this interdisciplinary course locates "drivers" for migration in the post-war period, trace the settlement processes, engage with the myriad challenges and developments migrants faced as new workers and citizens, before exploring the impact on succeeding generations. Through a salient ethnographic perspective of experiences, the course provides students with overarching and critical theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of migration, diaspora, and the nation-state in a globalized late modern context.

This course provides students with a grounding in the foundational doctrines of European Union (EU) Law. It will focus both on the institutional and constitutional law of the EU and in particular on the processes of political and administrative decision-making, legislation, and adjudication.