University College London

This course introduces statistics and the free software R/RStudio to students with no previous knowledge of mathematics beyond high school level. The course also assesses the uses, misuses and limitations of statistical methods. Topics range from basic descriptive statistics to more advanced topics including multivariate analysis, logistic regression, and model optimization. As additional skills, students are introduced to professional-standard plotting resources, basic programming functions in R, and the user-friendly RStudio interface.

This course covers intermediate mathematical methods presented in contexts relevant for economists and students of connected subject fields. It equips students with operational skills in applying intermediate, applied-mathematical methods to problems taken from various contexts in economics and social sciences; and to train students in planning and systematically executing lengthy calculations both on paper as well as using software aids such as Mathematica/Matlab/Python.

This course provides a first approximation to the study of Latin American politics, encompassing a wide range of topics in international relations and comparative politics. Although intended as a survey of main political science debates, the course also imparts basic knowledge about the culture, geography, and history of the region. It therefore follows a chronological ordering of topics to answer questions such as (1) How did colonial history shape politics in the region? (2) How did current national states form and consolidate? (3) How did political regimes and political parties evolve in two centuries of independent history? (4) Why is Latin America, simultaneously the most peaceful region considering international violence, and the most violent at the domestic level? (5) Which are the main challenges to political stability, economic growth, and development? The spirit of the course is  to identify how Latin America can contribute to broader theories as well. 

This course is intended for anyone interested in the two central themes of how languages work and how they change. The course covers: the basics of phonology (the sounds of a language) and morphology (analysis of the minimal meaningful elements in a language); the history of thought about language in the western tradition, from the ancient world to the 20th century; historical linguistics and the Indo-European languages; and sociolinguistics: how and why languages change.

This course develops students’ critical understandings of debates within cultural and historical geography and related disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. The course focuses on the emergence of representational approaches within cultural and historical geography, outlining their proximity to cultural studies and social theory, before exploring a range of approaches to the materiality of culture, from consumption to "things." The intellectual trajectories covered are explored through a range of sites, locations, spatialities, and empirical examples including, but not limited to: landscape, architecture and built space; racialization and spatiality; spaces of consumption, display and exhibition; regulated and policed spaces; artistic and creative spaces; spaces of practice, and so on. The course ends by considering the ‘rematerialization of cultural and historical geography’ offering students an accessible grasp of the theoretical staging grounds of debates at the forefront of the discipline.