University College London

The brain develops rapidly during the fetal and early postnatal period. While some aspects of development are genetically guided, others are activity-dependent. This means that special patterns of spontaneous electrical activity are required to correctly wire up the brain. This partly explains why fetal and neonatal brain injury can result in life-long negative consequences. Brain injury can result in either suppressed electrical activity or excessive electrical activity in the form of seizures. As a result, fragile early brain networks do not receive the carefully balanced patterns of electrical activity which they need to develop correctly. In this course students learn about this critical foundation of normal brain development, and how it can go wrong. 

This course offers an introduction to the full sweep of English literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present day. It allows students to sample works from different periods while also showing how these works are connected together, over and across time, by continuing narrative, generic and thematic concerns. Teaching will be by seminar, setting literary works written in English including modern translations of Old English. The course introduces students to a wide variety of reading matter – epics, mock-epics, long poems, novels, and it encourages students, through intense weekly seminars, to further develop their reading skills, and to broaden their critical vocabulary. The richness and variety of English literature is unparalleled – it is a wonderful subject to study. But it is also a challenging one, and this course is designed to give students a taste of that challenge.

The themes, methods, and ideas in the fields of social psychology and individual differences is introduced in this course. Students focus on social psychology and individual differences as scientific disciplines that uses experimental methods for data collection to formulate and empirically test theories of human nature.

This course provides students an introduction to recent developments in the migration and job search literature. Students learn how to formulate and solve dynamic models, and apply these models to analyze a range of topics including migration, employment transitions, and wage dispersion across workers. Throughout the course, analysis is linked to the current debate on migration and other labor market policies.

This is UCL's principal Entrepreneurship course for students who are actively seeking to develop and test a new business idea. It is most relevant to those who are considering forming their own business but is also valuable for “intrapreneurs” promoting new initiatives within existing organizations. Through the study of existing high-potential ventures and the development of a business feasibility plan the course provides deep insights regarding critical success factors (desirability feasibility and viability) along with strategies to attract and retain the necessary resources (personal, technical, and finance) to launch a new venture.

This course focuses on the mechanism of cancer generation and progression and on the most advanced treatments. Starting with a background integrating genetic, cellular, and molecular aspects, it covers recent cancer research leading to a general conceptual framework for the development of this disease. The course also provides insights and illustrations from specific cancer types and concludes with a variety of established and emerging treatments. 

This course examines the application of legal considerations to the activities of organizations. The focus is on a practical approach to legal issues and problems that arise. If I want to start a business what structures are available to me, such as forming a company? When is a legal contract formed, how can it be breached and what remedies may be available? What rights do employees have in the workplace, particularly in relation to dismissal, redundancy and discrimination? How does the English Legal System work? How can my valuable original work be protected from imitation and what are copyrights and patents?

Competency in structure and function of genomes as well as their evolution is essential in modern biology. This course gives students an advanced understanding of current scientific research in molecular mechanism of gene regulation, evolution of genomes and experimental approaches to study the function of genomes. The course focuses on the contribution of molecular biology and genomics to our knowledge of regulation of the gene activity in eukaryotic organisms and concepts of gene expression evolution. Critical analysis of original experimental data provides the intellectual framework for students to discuss the design of experiments and to draw appropriate conclusions from any results.

This course is a challenging introductory course and is for non-History of Art students. It examines modern and contemporary art focusing on objects in London's galleries and museums. The content of this course changes each year, but it introduces students to key issues and themes in British, European, and North American art from the mid-19th century through to the present day, by focusing on works in institutions such as Tate Britain and Tate Modern as well as smaller contemporary galleries such as The Whitechapel.

This course explores the history of emotions in the Greek and Roman world through literature and their relevance to the modern world. It focuses on emotions like wrath, eros and love, jealousy, fear, loss and separation, affection, happiness, sadness, surprise, contempt, disgust, pity, sympathy, pain and on how these emotions have been represented in Greek and Roman cultural systems and literary examples (both Greek and Roman literary texts will be explored and compared). How were these emotions born and what is their influence in the modern world? How does Greek and Roman literature relate to these emotions? And more generally, what is the relationship between these emotions and the Greek and Roman life and thought? After an overview of major Greek and Roman sources on the role of emotions in human life, the course explores the complex debate around emotions, their value and their use for philosophical, religious, political, and educational purposes.