University College London

The course explores the ethical basis of economics, with special reference to applied microeconomics and environmental policy analysis. Key skills developed include critical thinking (in understanding the theory), active listening (in lectures and tutorial classes), written materials (through the essays), information skills (in preparing essays), and oral/visual presentation (in tutorial classes).

The global challenge of sustainable development requires solutions and mindset that bridge traditional divisions between nature and culture, and the technical and social sciences. Sustainable development requires that engineers and other professionals are able to include social and ecological considerations alongside technical and economic requirements in managing projects and infrastructure. This course outlines the challenges of sustainability, introduces some theories which can help think through these challenges more clearly, and applies them to city and infrastructure systems. As each topic, such as ecological modernization, and sustainable consumption, is introduced, students learn about the theories behind the topic, they discuss relevant papers that shed light on the topic, and they discover the practical examples of relevance of the topic. 

This course uses an array of primary and secondary source readings to explore the emergence of the system of intensive colonial exploitation that we know as the plantation system. The course investigates the economic, political, legal, cultural, intellectual, and technological innovations that undergirded the development of the plantation as a colonial institution. It will also explore the role of bound and enslaved people in resisting and reshaping the institution. The seminar engages extensively with the historiographic debate about the relationship between the plantation system and the emergence of capitalism. It focuses upon developments across the Americas between the 16th and the late-18th century, drawing from the Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch empires and the newly independent United States.

 

The course helps students understand, through ethnographic, political, documentary, and historical material (written and film), key themes of the past 150 years in the former Soviet empire, including revolution, collectivization, socialism, Cold War, gender, art, propaganda, lifestyle, religion, nationalism and identity, and more.