University College London

This course addresses a variety of questions that are relevant in macroeconomics and for our current understanding of the global economy. Students cover five topics chosen in the following (non-exhaustive) list: the very long run and demographics, business cycles, hyperinflation, the liquidity trap,  income and wealth inequalities, sustainable development and Easter Island economics, and Market Economy vs Planned Economy and USSR economic development. In this course, students develop their appreciation of the value of macroeconomic theory and mathematical modelling for the understanding of historical and current economic issues.

The course discusses the drivers of energy services; the scope and challenges associated with satisfying the rising energy demand; the key concepts in the science of energy and potential technological supply options; the trade-offs in energy policy aiming to provide secure, affordable, and environmentally benign energy carriers; and the important role of analytical tools for shaping energy policy.

This course provides an introduction to archaeological theory. It helps students develop the skills and knowledge required to assess the coherence, value, and relevance of a variety of theoretical frameworks currently employed in archaeology. In order to achieve this, a number of issues are raised and explored that together give a good overview of the major trends of archaeological thought, and illustrate how archaeology has developed from its antiquarian past to a modern social science. 

Recent years have seen a debate about the waning of war, though for millions of people around the world, wars and violence are part of their everyday lives, with implications far beyond the war-torn states’ borders. This course explores major trends in warfare (types of wars, the actors engaged in wars, targets in wars, funding of warfare, technology of warfare), theories explaining these trends, the relationship between warfare and state-building, and ethical questions concerning how wars are fought.

This course offers students the opportunity to engage with art thinking and art practice. It proposes a collective and experimental space based on the individual projects of each student. Students learn, explore, and practice arts processes and develop a personal art project. This course provides an experience in interdisciplinary thinking. It calls on a wide-ranging set of materials from art, anthropology, architecture, philosophy, biology, physics, mathematics, neurology, and geology and introduce students to the work of some thinkers and practitioners working in those areas. 

Many people believe that citizens, and especially citizens in democratic states, have a duty to accept the authority of the law and to support and comply with the institutions of their state. In this course students examine this assumption in depth, and from various perspectives. They engage with recent philosophical discussions on the nature of political authority, on the legitimacy of democracy and on the duty to resist state injustices.

This course aligns Political Sociology to the social scientific study of political issues by other disciplines such as Political Psychology and Political Science, and seeks to develop a broad account of politics that can be used to understand contemporary social and political themes. The course combines the study of institutional and everyday politics, focusing on topics such as formal and informal types of political participation, political partisanship, elites and the distribution of power, the rise of populism, the politics of emotion and identity politics. Students taking this course learn about the theoretical, methodological, and empirical aspects of research in Political Sociology and related disciplines.