Explore issues ranging from environmental disasters to corporate greed and from executive pay to ethical bottled water. You discover the relationship between management and corporations on the one hand, and society and nature on the other, engaging in debates around ecological sustainability, governance and corporate ethics and responsibility.

This module considers key debates and concepts underpinning the development of different approaches to managing equality and diversity within work organisations. You will develop a critical and reflexive understanding of theory and practice and evaluate the role of HR professionals in managing equality and diversity.

Theories of justice are still being worked on and developed today. You question contemporary theories of justice through applying them to some of the most controversial issues dominating contemporary politics.

Study one of the most important contemporary aspects of political action: the natural environment. You consider the state of the environment and possible paths along which it might change, before exploring environmental policies from the level of individual values to the environmental movement to political parties, and finally to the level of international affairs.

What is at stake when we study war, culture and society? This module equips students with different disciplinary perspectives on the human experience of war in different times and places. It introduces students to major historical debates on the social effects of war in the modern era, human rights in conflict zones, and the psychological causes and consequences of war experience. Alongside approaches to these debates, students will consider diverse ways of 'framing' the study of war – whether this means thinking through gender, looking at the local or the global, or considering how individuals and societies come to terms with death rather than focusing on fighting. Finally, the module introduces students to a range of primary sources for studying war and its effects on culture and society, including personal testimony, legal sources, medical texts, and film. The module therefore exposes students to theoretical and methodological perspectives that will inform their study across this MA programme.

In the Atlantic World, war and slavery were intimately entwined. In Africa, warfare created slaves, while slavery spawned warfare. In the Americas, armies consisting of slaves and free blacks fought alternately for and against slaveholders through the eighteenth century, while in the nineteenth century, war figured prominently in the destruction of slavery. This M.A. module examines the complex relationship between war and slavery in the Atlantic World between ca. 1450 and 1850. It will begin with an examination of the role of warfare in the process of enslavement before exploring the many ways in which enslaved and freed people participated in warfare in the Americas. Topics will include: European and West African ideologies of warfare and enslavement; the 'predatory state' thesis; gender, warfare, and enslavement in Africa; the "gun-slave cycle"; free black militias in the Iberian colonies; the employment of black soldiers, free and enslaved, in the wars of the long eighteenth century; ex-soldiers and slave rebellion in the Americas; and the role of warfare in ending slavery. Students will be required to complete a historiographic essay on a topic of their choosing. This will be a reading-intensive module. Students are expected to read an entire book every second week, along with substantial reading in between. Each student is expected to contribute to seminar discussions on a regular basis and to run the seminar (as part of a group) at least once.

Want to work as a human rights professional? Using the UN human rights mechanisms, learn the essential skills to become a human rights practitioner. Apply this knowledge practically through engagement with projects by our Human Rights Centre Clinic.

How does the international system enhance the advancement of human rights? And how does it constrain it? Study the international system and its influence on human rights. Examine the role of foreign policy instruments in promoting human rights. Analyse how human rights can advance foreign policy goals by states.

Until very recently, it was frequently claimed that human rights were the dominant moral instruments for regulating global politics and law. Indeed, many went so far as to claim that we were living in an age of human rights. Is this still true today? Human rights are increasingly challenged from a variety of perspectives. Indeed, an increasing number of people describe the global human rights project to be in a state of real crisis. With human rights increasingly challenged, it is vitally important that we are able to understand the basis and extent of this challenge, in order to overcome the challenge. This module provides an opportunity to do just that. We will situate the theory and the practice of human rights within the broader moral and political contexts within which contemporary human rights unfolds. We will also connect theory with practice in order to examine key spheres in which the challenge to human rights occurs.

Gain a comprehensive education in a range of foundational and applied issues arising out of the complex and sometimes, conflictual relationship between human rights and cultural diversity. It also enables you to engage with related challenges and issues impacting human rights-based responses to a selection of key global challenges, particularly concerning the complex social, political and legal relationships between the Global South and the Global North. The module will be taught over a single academic term.

Address key challenges for human rights across the developed and developing worlds. So-called identity politicking has emerged in the past 40 years as a prominent and deeply controversial phenomenon within most societies. It is undeniably true that many human rights violations specifically target groups perceived and ascribed identities. We inhabit societies where intolerance of difference and diversity have become key challenges for the defence of human rights and the pursuit of social justice. The response to this has often involved targeted communities seeking protection from rights-based mechanisms. There exist many instruments within international human rights law that seek to protect and promote distinct communities of people. However, the rights-based approach to identity politicking raises many, difficult to answer, questions concerning the compatibility of rights-based approaches and identity-based politics.

How can a nation reach its potential if it will not think of itself as new, independent and important? Study major writers from the nineteenth century onwards. Explore the development of US nationalism and literature. Examine the development of regionalism. Understand how these processes relate to wider transnational considerations.

How do US writers imagine and represent the Caribbean? And vice versa? Deepen knowledge of American literature by examining poetic, fictional, nonfictional and dramatic works in a broader context. Investigate contemporary issues like the American Dream, what it means to be from the Americas, migration, and the question of language.

What are the contemporary issues within international human rights law? How does the UN promote and protect human rights? Gain a critical and contextual introduction to international human rights law. Build your analytical skills in relation to the subject. Discuss current issues and events in group work.

What protection does international law offer refugees and internally displaced persons? Examine legal definitions of refugee status. Understand the guarantees provided for such groups by international human rights law. Evaluate the limitations of such laws by states in Europe and North America.

What does right to development mean? How does it relate to human rights treaties? What is a human rights-based approach to development? Study international human rights law, exploring theoretical and practical implications of linking human rights and development. Analyse specific human rights themes. Evaluate the role of governments and organisations.

What are the global standards set by the GATT/World Trade Organisation? And by World Bank policies? Examine relationships between human rights, international trade and foreign investment. Study legal issues, plus ethical, political and economic arguments on current topics. Evaluate cases to see the practical effect of linking trade and rights.

You’ll receive an introduction to the protection and promotion of women’s and girls’ human rights under international law. Your focus will be on the universal human rights mechanisms, with some analysis of regional human rights mechanisms, especially relating to violence against women. You’ll consider sexual and reproductive rights, economic, social and cultural rights, administration of justice, women’s rights in conflict and post-conflict, and violence against women. You’ll also look at the persistence of gender stereotyping, theories of equality and discrimination, and the efforts of human rights defenders.

Broadly speaking transitional justice refers to the belief that any State where mass atrocities have taken place should engage with a set of judicial and non-judicial processes in order to achieve a successful transition from conflict to peace or repression to democracy. You’ll receive an overview of the history, theory, legal background and dilemmas of transitional justice, followed by in-depth discussions of the four pillars of transitional justice – truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence, and of their interrelatedness.

This module builds on the foundational introduction to Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR) provided in module International Human Rights Law: Law and Practice. Other related modules that may of interest to students of ESCR are: Human Rights and Women, Human Rights Centre Clinic, Protection of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples, Human Rights and Development, Investment, Trade and Human Rights, Business and Human Rights and Human Rights, Social Justice and Social Change.

Gain an in-depth overview of the legal and political frameworks developed at the international level governing gender, peace and security. The module highlights the interface between feminist legal theory, international human rights law, international relations theory and additional legal frameworks. These consist of: displacement, peacekeeping, terrorism, weapons and disarmament, investigations and commissions of inquiry, prosecutions and reparations.

What are the relevant contexts of refugee experiences? How can academic disciplines help us understand refugee experiences in a deeper way? How can we grasp the multidimensional aspects of the refugee phenomena? Study the multidisciplinary nature of Refugee Care from a unique combination of both academic and professional perspectives.

What psychological complexities are involved when working with people whose human rights have been violated? How do you, as a worker, interact with people? In what way do wider contexts impact on these interactions? Explore the psychosocial parameters of human rights violations. Engage with issues, debates and literature on psychosocial perspectives of human rights.

This module introduces students to some of the ways in which psychoanalytic thought has animated different feminist, trans, and queer accounts of gender since Freud’s time of writing. We will avoid a polarised presentation of psychoanalysis as either friend or foe to progressive accounts of gender, but rather commit to investigating how psychoanalysis – both as theory and as praxis – can productively disrupt our stable knowledge economies, and lend itself to encounters with gender that feature resistance, interruption, revelation, and impasse.

This module seeks to ground students in the interdisciplinary theories that have been essential to feminist theory, queer theory, and the study of gender and sexuality more broadly. In this respect, the course proceeds both thematically and chronologically, covering some of the 'canonical' feminist and queer interventions and methods, such as rights-based liberal feminism; radical feminism; Black feminism; Marxist feminism; standpoint epistemology; transnational feminism; ecofeminism; intersectionality; AIDS & LGBT activism; queer theory; and trans studies. But, by approaching these texts through contemporary and transportable concepts (like 'borders', 'pandemics', 'mothers,' 'environments', and 'the gaze') we will emphasize the enduring relevance of these foundational texts for making sense of current social experiences and cultural objects.

This module covers special topics in critical race and transnational feminisms. The module prioritizes an intersectional focus on race, gender, and class, exploring how these three identity coordinates are at work in key sites and locations. For instance, we consider race and the management of women's bodies; feminist and anti-colonial pedagogies; race, class, and gender in the carceral system; the nature of women's reproductive labor and women's work in a globalized context; and the racial and gendered politics of protest. The module also includes a mid-term field trip to an art exhibition to consider the politics of art and representation.

This module introduces students to key debates within environmental ethics, looking at the history of environmental ethics as well as at contemporary debates within animal ethics, environmental injustice and racism, environmental activism, the rights of future generations and apocalyptic ethics. Throughout the course, we will actively engage with recent news stories and developments in environmental science, finding and discussing the ethical dilemmas these give rise to. We will consider the strengths and weaknesses of applying traditional ethical frameworks like deontology, virtue ethics and utilitarianism to these problems, and look at more recent attempts at attributing value and agency to our non-human environment.

What is ‘critical theory’? At one level, it is a tradition that can be traced back to ‘Frankfurt School’ thinkers such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. But the term has also come to be used more broadly, to encompass independent traditions of thought such as (certain strands within) feminism, anti-racism, post-colonialism and queer theory. This course aims to give a ‘critical’ introduction to critical theory, looking beyond the canon in order to come to a deeper understanding of critical theory and its limits.

Discover what is probably the most influential and significant tradition of critical social philosophy to have emerged within twentieth-century European philosophy: The Frankfurt School. The module takes either the form of concentrating on some of the leading figures (such as Adorno and Horkheimer, or Habermas, or Honneth), or focusing on specific themes such as alienation, reification, social pathology, progress, capitalism or social freedom. The exact focus will vary from year to year.

This seminar is an introduction to major theoretical approaches and substantive issues in the current sociological thinking on citizenship, with a view on the postwar reconfigurations of the nation-state and citizenship via globalization and the expansion of transnational framework of human rights. Substantively, the seminar explores the contemporary processes that underline the inclusions and exclusions in the body of citizenry: territorial and cultural closure of the nation, expansion of individual (human) rights and privileges, immigration and incorporation of diversity, European citizenship, globalization of economy and markets, and the transnationalization of normativity, actors, and claims for citizenship.

How do we challenge our conventional understanding of crime? And what can we do about this? Examine the history of criminology and learn about the contemporary debates. Study topics like criminalisation, social deviance, and surveillance and punishment. Look ahead with analysis of new work by leading authors in the field.

What do we mean when we talk about organised crime? And how is this used as a tool for governance? Explore landmark studies and emerging horizons in the field of organised crime studies. Gain an understanding of the social, political, media, cultural and ideological topics related to organised crime.

Is one man’s terrorist another’s freedom fighter? Go beyond that debate to really challenge your understanding of terrorism. Learn how to define and analyse terrorism. Examine themes on dimensions of terrorism, including political, animal rights and religious extremism. Explore counter terrorism, covering topics like surveillance, policing and the law.As part of this module you have the opportunity to visit the Counter Terrorism Headquarter in London for our annual optional field trip. You will be required to pay any associated travel costs if you choose to attend.

How do we understand crime in our increasingly globalised world? And what about forms of control and criminal justice policy? Critically examine criminological thought on globalisation, migration, policy convergence, punishment, and crimes against the state.

How has colonialism created human rights problems, now and in the past? And what part did mandates for free markets, industrialism and state sovereignty play? Study thinkers like Cesaire, Fanon, Arendt, Agamben and Taussig. Discuss specific international situations like Palestine, forced removal of Aboriginal children and the war on terror.

Throughout the module, we will discuss international theories of migration and social integration, examine migration and refugee policies in a comparative perspective, the difference between statistical and taste-based discrimination, and the perpetuation of bias, how we gain an understanding of labour market integration; and the debates surrounding migration, prostitution and sex work.