University College London

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.

This course introduces students to the economics of globalization. It explores reasons why classical economists thought comparative advantage (or differences between countries) was the basis for international trade, when in the past few decades the bulk of international trade has been between very similar countries. Students study the effects of the growing importance of international trade, with a focus on recent trade agreements and their projected consequences. During the second part of the course, students study the causes and effects of migration, and data and policy analysis is conducted to investigate the immigration regimes of some popular migrant destinations.

The course familiarizes students, quantitatively and qualitatively, with important issues in environmental economics and environmental policy making such as anthropogenic global warming, the sustainable use of resources such as fish and forests, and environmental pollution. The course gives you hands-on experience in how to model complex economic and environmental systems, helps you understand the basic natural processes affecting the environment, introduces you to you the main tools and challenges involved in environmental valuation, shows you ways to determine the efficient level of pollution, and discusses the instruments available to policy makers to reach such targets.

In this course, students focus on how bodily experiences shape sickness, disability, health, and wellbeing. The course also explores more general themes in anthropology by addressing how multisensory bodily experience shapes and is shaped by factors such as identity, gender, religion, kinship, the material world, and political economy.  This course introduces students to the "sensory turn" in anthropology and equip students with knowledge of relevant theories for studying the sensorial body, including concepts such as phenomenology, embodiment and perception. Students gain ethnographic knowledge regarding how people experience the world through multisensory bodily experience and the role this has in shaping cultural life in many contexts. Students explore the methodological skills needed to carry out ethnography that focuses on the sensorial body, and they have the space to put this knowledge into practice as students are required to design and conduct your own mini research project as the summative assessment.