This third art and ideas module deepens your existing thematic and historiographical knowledge building on Art and Ideas II. In this module, we will familiarise ourselves with some of the most influential and insightful theoretical approaches to art in the 20th and 21st Century.

This module offers final year students a unique opportunity to work together in an interdisciplinary team on a real-world project for a local partner organisation. It enables you to use the knowledge and skills you’ve acquired during your degree to address a real-world challenge, while sharing and developing your creative, organisational and practical abilities. By doing so, this module will prepare you for entering the graduate labour market or going on to post-graduate study.

Is Montaigne right to wonder whether Westerners are worse off morally than tribes who practice cannibalism? What kind of writing does George Orwell champion? What did Marx and Engels achieve with ‘The Communist Manifesto’? Examine the ‘dangerous ideas’ presented in a range of subversive essays and manifestos. Study how they challenge and satirise existing ideas and social arrangements. Experiment with writing, thus broadening the approach of your own essays.

Is Montaigne right to wonder whether Westerners are worse off morally than tribes who practice cannibalism? What kind of writing does George Orwell champion? What did Marx and Engels achieve with ‘The Communist Manifesto’? Examine the ‘dangerous ideas’ presented in a range of subversive essays and manifestos. Study how they challenge and satirise existing ideas and social arrangements. Experiment with writing, thus broadening the approach of your own essays.

Is Montaigne right to wonder whether Westerners are worse off morally than tribes who practice cannibalism? What kind of writing does George Orwell champion? What did Marx and Engels achieve with ‘The Communist Manifesto’? Examine the ‘dangerous ideas’ presented in a range of subversive essays and manifestos. Study how they challenge and satirise existing ideas and social arrangements. Experiment with writing, thus broadening the approach of your own essays.

Access to water is one of the most urgent global challenges facing us today. Vital for health and well-being, as well as integral to indigenous cultures and industrial processes, water is a threatened commons and contested commodity. In this module, we will explore global and local case studies that highlight challenges of scarcity, contamination, privatization, and climate change, and the cultural importance of bodies of water for diverse communities. We will examine water-related problems, such as economic and urban development, grassroots activism, political conflict, community relations, heritage and public health.

In this module, you will focus on the economic history of economic growth and technical change centred on the 'second industrial revolution' and stemming from the advances in the latter part of the 19th century. Beginning with an overview of global patterns of growth to the early 21st century, you’ll be introduced to macroeconomic approaches to long-run growth, in particular accounting for technological change. You’ll focus on case studies of key sectors contributing to technical progress, including electricity, chemicals, in the late 19th century through to Information and Communications Technology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

This module introduces students to the field of behavioural economics which combines economic analysis with insights from psychology to understand human behaviour. This module is offered at second year undergraduate, and at third year undergraduate. While the content is the same for both levels, the learning outcomes assessed in the modules are slightly different.

Which institutions control international trade? How are they organised? What are their objectives? And why are some of their activities deemed controversial? Study the world trading system since World War Two, learning about the most important issues in international trade policy and deepening your knowledge of the global economy.

What economic issues do computing firms face today? What about the pharmaceutical industry? Or telecommunication organisations? How does new technological knowledge allow these firms to keep a competitive edge? Using real-life case studies, learn how economics model-building methodology helps with the challenges of managing new technology in the modern world.

How are firms organised? What impact does this have on their environment? Or their competitive strategies? Using real-life case studies, understand the economic principles behind different organisational arrangements. Apply economic analysis to address issues about decision making within different firms.

Gain a rich background in the concepts and techniques of game theory, its uses, limitations and issues. The course is also applied, focussing on several important cases of strategic interaction, including auctions, interactions between rival firms, moral hazard and adverse selection, and the theory of the firm. Upon completion of the course, you will be able to evaluate the impact the strategic considerations in the analysis of interactions among decision-makers, and you will have learned how to apply game theory to issues in microeconomics.

This module develops the material started in Intermediate Macroeconomics and aims to give students an understanding of the main types of economic data; how those data are collected, constructed and used and Key ideas in the module will be illustrated with reference to recent events and current policy debates. Upon successful completion of this module, you will be able to approach macroeconomic data critically, and to evaluate the strength of empirical evidence for macroeconomic theories and macroeconomic policy positions.

This module examines the distinctive features of less developed economies and introduces you to the literature that attempts to explain the persistence of poverty in those economies. We start with a historical analysis of the growth process to examine why there has been a divergence in the performances between the developed and the developing countries. The module will then elaborate on the role of institutions and incentives in shaping long run economic development. In particular, we shall examine the role of market imperfections, non-market institutions (such as social norms) and governance institutions.

Expand on the mathematical techniques you developed in Mathematical Methods in Economics. You’ll learn how to use additional mathematical tools, which will enable you to analyse a larger, richer, and more interesting set of economic models. The main focus of the course is on methods for studying dynamic economic problems. Rather than concentrating exclusively on mathematical techniques, intuition for how and why these techniques work will be developed through application to specific economic problems.

In this module you will explore a range of methods used in the modern application of econometric techniques to economic and financial data. The course will enable you to practise the relevant methods, rather than to derive estimators or tests, or to prove the theorems upon which these are based.

Analyse the economics rationale for ‘collective choice’ in a market economy in this applied module. Explore social welfare, equity and efficiency, and evaluate the government’s ability to identify and achieve ‘better’ outcomes. By analysing actual programmes in areas of poverty reduction, education, and health, you will be able to apply your knowledge of broad empirical patterns and institutions to real-life situations in the UK and abroad.

How have labour markets changed over time? Why is there an increased inequality of wages? In this module, you will investigate the determination of labour market outcomes, and discuss why and how differences across individuals occur. Using practical examples throughout, you will develop vital analytical tools needed to understand wage and employment foundation and trends, and will discuss what makes the labour market so important.

How does a monopolist make decisions? And what impact do such decisions have? How can regulators control this behaviour? Build your understanding of monopoly industries, starting with the sources, creation and exercise of monopoly power. Critically assess the principles and practices of monopoly regulation, using real-world examples from industry.

How do firms make decisions? And how do these decisions impact on the prices you pay? What role does game theory play? Understand strategic interaction among firms, using theoretical tools to examine real-world examples. Analyse the main economic forces behind firm behaviour, adapting economic models to study particular challenges.

Despite all the talk about the “death of distance”, geography matters more than ever. This course is a journey through the current economic landscape. We will try to understand the economic forces driving trends in wages, productivity and innovation across cities and regions. These are the forces that will define the geography of future jobs and will shape the economic destiny of local communities around the world.

How do foreign exchange markets determine trade? Understand the economic role that international currency markets play. Study models to interpret exchange rate movements and how this links to key macroeconomic variables. Analyse real-life policies that respond to events in the international monetary system.

How do economic theories determine asset prices? Can you apply analytical reasoning to asset pricing problems? Understand capital markets and explore the predictability of asset price changes. Learn to build simple models of asset markets and how to interpret the mathematics of such models in economic terms.

How do you apply economic reasoning to the markets for bonds, futures contracts and financial options? Study the distinctive characteristics of bonds as financial assets. Gain an understanding of derivatives markets, focusing on futures and options. Explore theories of financial intermediation and learn to evaluate models of price determination.

Can economic analysis be applied to environmental issues? And to environmental policies? Understand the strengths and weaknesses of economic analysis when applied to the environment. Learn to design policies that result in positive environmental outcomes in the modern world.

Why does the government play such an important role in the health care sector? How does the patients’ lack of information affect medical prices? Can we use economics modules to understand the rationale for risky behaviours, such as smoking? These are some of the questions you will try to answer during this module, building on your insights of microeconomic theory, and covering a broad range of concepts, theories, and topics related to the economics of healthcare.

Experimental Economics has become a very popular method to address questions that are hard to answer with field data. Laboratory experiments are used to investigate individual choice behaviours such as giving to charities, or behaviour in strategic interactions such as financial markets and collective decision making. The experiments are also used to analyse firm behaviour and assess policies such as anti-trust legislation or even monetary policy. In this module, we will critically evaluate whether these experimental methods provide answers for policy makers and private sector decision makers.

What interests you? Design and implement your own research project, under the guidance and supervision of our world-leading academic staff. Demonstrate your knowledge of economic ideas in greater depth, building your professional research skills and developing further understanding of a topic that fascinates you.

Is torture ever morally justified? Should pornography be banned? Should prostitution be legalised? Take part in the intellectual search for the moral principles that should govern how we answer these questions and others in governing public policy.

Understand how different statistical and experimental methods can be used to answer questions about political phenomena. You evaluate the assumptions of standard statistical tests and the linear regression model, consider alternatives to those, and learn about causal inference.

Examine how people reason about voting and politics, and why people vote the way that they do. You consider the effects of institutions such as the electoral system or the number of political parties on voting behaviour, using case studies from elections in Britain and other advanced democracies.

How do interest groups influence the trajectory of a country's foreign policy? Who benefits and gains from globalisation and how does this affect their political beliefs? In this module, we will explore how domestic politics and interests influence government's decisions in the international arena, and how international politics affect domestic politics.

In this module you will examine corruption, a global problem that is present in dictatorships as well as democracies, in developing and more developed societies alike. In particular, you'll focus on the impact of corruption on democratic regimes. At the extreme, corruption hampers economic development, reinforces social inequality, and undermines democratic development generally. You will start by defining corruption and discuss alternative tools to evaluate the extent of corruption within a given polity. You'll then examine the causes and consequence of corruption (both political and bureaucratic). Last, but not least, you'll evaluate existing strategies to contain and control this problem.

Explore German politics against the backdrop of the country’s troubled history, investigating its institutions forming a ‘militant democracy’, an adaptive party system and active social movements as the main channels for participation, and the challenging societal, cultural and economic transformation after World War II and reunification into the current ‘Berlin Republic’

This module aims to provide students with a detailed knowledge of how the UK Parliament works (in both theory and practice). Subject to validation, this module is co-taught by staff at the Houses of Parliament and has the support of The Speaker and the Clerk of the House in the House of Commons, and the Lord Speaker and the Clerk of the Parliaments in the House of Lords. The module content is delivered collaboratively by the Houses of Parliament and the University of Essex, with the University providing academic and theoretical content and Parliament providing practical and vocational teaching about the work, processes and business of Parliament.

Explore German politics against the backdrop of the country’s troubled history, investigating its institutions forming a ‘militant democracy’, an adaptive party system and active social movements as the main channels for participation, and the challenging societal, cultural and economic transformation after World War II and reunification into the current ‘Berlin Republic’.

Politics is about people. Everything – angry tweeting, constitutional design, environmental lobbying, states going to war – boils down to the opinions, decisions and behaviour of individuals, and understanding those is the territory of psychology. Political psychology is a growing and thriving subfield, to which this module provides a wide-ranging introduction.

The field of security studies has become increasingly important over the last decade. While old conflicts are reigniting and new ones are emerging, scholars and decision-makers debate about changes to the concepts of security, the redundancy of military force, and the centrality of the state in order to face these ever-important issues.

War narratives and studies of political violence have traditionally focused on the roles and actions of men. Women have typically been framed as innocent bystanders and victims. Yet, women often actively participate in civil wars and in terrorist campaigns, either as civilian supporters of these groups or as armed fighters. In addition to acknowledging the profound impact that civil conflicts have on women, this course explores the many important roles that women often play in terrorist and rebel organizations and examines women's potential contributions to post-war peace building and conflict resolution. The objective of the course is that you will gain a better understanding of the roles women play in the production and resolution of political violence and the manner in which gender and gender attitudes influence war and armed conflict.

In this module, you’ll gain an introduction to the domestic politics of Israel in a comparative perspective, including issues of internal cultural diversity, religion and politics, fragmentation of the political party system, and coalition governance. You’ll explore political institutions, parties, and voting behaviour in Israel, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the state of Israel as a democratic country, understand the Israeli political structure, and discuss the electoral arena.

This module explores the relation between gender and political theory by focusing on the work of feminist theorists, the critiques they have developed of mainstream understandings of key political concepts, and how they have sought to 'en-gender' those concepts. Themes may include the public/private divide, equality, intersectionality, democracy, power, rights, justice.

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.

This module explores the nature and foundations of international obligations. It asks what we owe to people in other countries, and what they can demand of us as a matter of right. Questions to be addressed include the following: Who owes what to the very poor? Are citizens of affluent countries complicit in the creation and maintenance of world poverty? Does justice demand the elimination of global inequality? Is the promotion of human rights a form of western cultural imperialism? When is international trade unfair? Do states have a right to close their borders to outsiders? Under what conditions (if any) is it permissible to wage war? We will address these questions by considering the answers that they have received in important recent works of normative political theory.

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.

This course is about how representative democracy works in Europe. We will examine several topics within the European context, including: public opinion, political participation, political parties, electoral systems, party competition, and how to evaluate democracies. We will also develop specific knowledge about several European countries, by learning how the political institutions (several are mentioned above) function within them. The course also provides an accessible introduction to research design and methods that political scientists have used to address these topics.

Prepare an 8,000 word dissertation which researches the political topic you are most passionate about.

International Current Affairs (or Understanding Our World) aims to introduce you to cutting edge debates in international politics and media in the age of misinformation and post-truth. The module aims to prepare Essex students to be new generation of solution-focused graduates with a sophisticated understanding of the complexities of our interconnected world. Beyond the focus on the global North that usually dominate our understanding of international politics, the module will also provide insight into major events and crises in the global South, while reflecting on policies, how they are developed and their impact on the everyday life of citizens around the world.

This module is intended to provide you with a broad understanding the main theoretical frameworks of media and journalism to develop their critical appraisal of the interconnected communication world of today. This module is intended to provide you with a broad understanding the main theoretical frameworks of media and journalism to develop their critical appraisal of the interconnected communication world of today. It is aimed primarily at students looking to develop a research career in journalism or media studies as well as those students looking to acquire a critical approach to journalistic practice. It will also be interesting to students of Government and Sociology who are interested in understanding the big debates around the media and the relationships with politics and society. Each week a current event will be discussed in the seminar as well. The module will equip students with the knowledge, theoretical frameworks, and critical tools to unpack the complexities of contemporary networked newsrooms. It will provide the conceptual framework required to analyze and comprehend our interconnected communication sphere. The module will be open to students from LIFTS who want to critically reflect on the professional practice and to students from Government and Sociology who would be eager to acquire analytical tools that would support their interdisciplinary research.

What is politics (is it about justice or power)? How does political philosophy relate to real politics? What are competing approaches in contemporary philosophy? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches?

Develop your research and written skills through writing a dissertation on a philosophical topic studied in either your second year or the autumn term of your final year.

This module examines the relationships between faith and reason, religion and philosophy. We shall approach these topics, historically, by considering how they were discussed by some key figures in nineteenth-century European philosophy.

Discover the philosophical questions that are raised by everyday medical practice and recent developments in medical science. You consider topics including reproductive ethics, resource allocation, the ethics of enhancement, and biopolitics.

“Analytic Philosophy” is a (sometimes controversial) term commonly used to describe the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world from the early 20th century to present day. We will explore prominent themes and authors within this tradition. The focus will vary year-on-year; examples include topics from analytic philosophy of mind and metaphysics (the mind-body problem; personal identity; consciousness and “qualia”…) and topics from analytic philosophy of language (what is meaning? How do names and descriptions refer to objects? Does context make a difference to the meaning of what we say, and does what we say shape the context in return?...)

Discover Ancient Greek philosophy and read some of the most influential works in the history of Western Philosophy. In this module we focus on Plato and Aristotle, exploring how ethics, political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics and psychology are all intertwined. The course begins with an overview of philosophy before Socrates and ends with a short exploration of the philosophical schools that flourished in the Roman empire.

Existentialism encompasses a variety of different thinkers unified by a) the belief that human existence cannot be fully understood using the categories provided by the philosophical tradition or the natural sciences, and b) a commitment to taking seriously the first-person quality of experience as it is lived. For this reason Existentialism has close ties to Phenomenology, which is a philosophical methodology defined by its insistence on examining meaning as it is experienced first-personally in order to uncover the structures governing the possibility of those meaningful experiences. We will address the key Existentialist question: How do you become who you are? We will make use of figures from both within and outside of the phenomenological tradition when addressing this question.

This module introduces students to different traditions of “Critical Theory”. Critical Theory, a tradition associated with the Frankfurt School but also embodied by wider radical traditions, aims to reflect critically and holistically on society and the role of the theorist within it in order to tackle oppressions and the ideological forms of thought that underpin them, and thus to contribute to projects of emancipation.

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason initiates a new 'critical' method in philosophy which has been highly influential in both continental and analytic philosophy. His critical method establishes a new way of thinking about the relation in which we stand to the world, and the role played by knowledge and judgement within that world.

This module gives students an opportunity to apply social science to address key issues facing society at the local, national and global level. For example, what is the impact of the war in Yemen or in Syria? What is the impact of Brexit? How does global warming affect us? What are the major challenges in the 21st century? This module will tackle a different theme each term to better understand how Social Science can be used to understand the big issues.