United Kingdom - Scotland

The course introduces students to the origins of modern economic thought; the development of the main traditions and the differences and controversies between them, and demonstrates their contemporary relevance. It examines the history of economic ideas and the evolution of the main schools of economic thought from the 18th century to the present day. 

This course explores how scholars and practitioners use musical data, both in audio and notated formats. Students are given the opportunity to develop skills in encoding, analyzing, categorizing, and curating music recordings and notated music. These skills are developed by encouraging an intimate understanding of the nature of different musical formats, an appreciation of their uses, and approaches to computational analyses of their electronic manifestations.

This course introduces the essential concepts and techniques of critical reasoning, formal propositional logic, and basic predicate logic. Among the central questions are these: what distinguishes an argument from a mere rhetorical ploy? What makes an argument a good one? How can we formally prove that a conclusion follows from some premises? In addressing these questions, students also cover topics such as argumentative fallacies, ambiguity, argument forms and analyses, induction versus deduction, counterexamples, truth-tables, truth-trees (tableaux), natural deduction, and quantification.

This is an introductory course in Nuclear Astrophysics, a subject in its own right that often drives major scientific and technological advances in modern day research both in nuclear physics and astrophysics. The course builds upon (and adds a layer of complexity to) the existing Nuclear Physics course and provides an option for choice of specialized topics within Nuclear Physics (but also Astrophysics).

This course is for students interested in the policies and management of the natural environment and its resources. The transferable nature of the skills elements involved may make this course attractive to other students wishing to pursue a career in government agencies or consultancy. The course provides students with a toolkit of quantitative and qualitative techniques used in resource planning and analysis, together with case studies with which to gain experience of their application.

From sparkly vampires to blockbuster monsters, gothic tropes appear to be all-pervasive in contemporary culture. As Catherine Spooner claims in CONTEMPORARY GOTHIC (2006), like "a malevolent virus, Gothic narratives have escaped the confines of literature and spread across disciplinary boundaries to infect all kinds of media, from fashion and advertising to the way contemporary events are constructed in mass culture." This course introduces students to Gothic’s literary expression in the British 19th century, before exploring the many ways in which this dark heritage continues to affect contemporary cultural production. Focusing on three key texts from the 19th century, FRANKENSTEIN (1818), THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE (1886), and DRACULA (1897), this course discusses their adaptation, appropriation, and influence on popular narratives such as those found in fiction, film, tv, fashion, and music video. 

This course looks closely at cultural representation in museums, what they display, to whom, and how. Students first gain an understanding of how museums are organized and the concerns each department faces in terms of cultural representation. Then, they embark on an exploration of the current critical issues facing museums as they represent cultures, both that of the communities in which they reside and other peoples. Nowhere are these issues more palpable than in the National Museum of Scotland, with its large, varied, and historical collection, tasked with representing Scotland's relationship to the global world for a local and global audience. Using the galleries of the National Museum as guide and case study, students examine how nine specific conversations in museology - capitalism, community, citizenship, technology, scientific norms, race, colonialism, ethnology, and memory - are constructed, negotiated, and challenged in the museum.

This course introduces the social, ethical, legal, and professional issues involved in the widespread deployment of information technology. It stimulates students to develop their own, well-argued positions on many of these issues.

Students think about the social and ethical implications of the widespread and sustainable use of IT; develop awareness of the laws and professional codes of conduct governing the IT industry; explore IT industry working practices, including the need for continuing professional development; develop information gathering skills; and adopt principled, reasoned stances on important issues in the topic area. 

This course explores the interconnected spheres of paid employment, unpaid labor, and care and welfare in order to understand the politics of contested UK reforms in international and comparative perspective.