Did you know that the not-for-profit sector is expanding fast in the UK, and offers meaningful jobs that can contribute to positive social change and ecological sustainability? This module introduces you to this sector and the concept and practice of social entrepreneurship using case studies of initiatives that have helped local communities, disadvantaged people and the environment. It also gives you the opportunity to develop your skills and use your creativity and imagination to design your own project or enterprise.

How have contemporary societies been shaped by the legacies of the Enlightenment, colonialism, and the different phases of capitalism? This interdisciplinary module helps you to critically understand some of the key forces and processes that have shaped the challenges we face in the 20th and 21st century. It is divided into three broad themes; Empire, The Self, and Nature. We’ll be examining processes of ‘othering’ that were intrinsic to colonialism; changing conceptions of the self; as well as both the causes of and potential solutions to the ecological crisis we are confronting today. The module is co-taught by academics from Art History, ISC, LiFTs, Philosophy, Psychoanalytic Studies and Sociology.

Why did industrialisation first occur in Europe, not China or India? How did economic growth lead to the Industrial Revolution? What impact did two world wars have on the global economy? Explore the process of economic change and development from the sixteenth-century to the present day.

What tools can you use for macroeconomic analysis? And how can these then be applied to macro-policy issues? Learn how to build alternative macroeconomic models and apply analytical reasoning. Examine real-life macroeconomic questions, on topics such as government budgets or wage-price flexibility, and critically evaluate macroeconomic policies.

How do consumers behave in a competitive market? And what about producers? How do various imperfections affect the outcome of decentralised markets? Study the fundamental concepts and methods in microeconomics. Understand the tools and methods of analysis for economic reasoning, and develop your critical approach to economic issues and policies.

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 offers you an opportunity to explore, develop and apply an interdisciplinary set of theories useful for understanding and acting within the professional and academic field of community and regional development. The module takes you through what the nature of community groups are, the structures of power in society; the function of non-profits and community organizations; the networks that tie community groups to each other; and how students can work together to make a difference at the local level engaging with these actors and networks. Four development streams are explored in depth: urban poverty and ecology, rural poverty and sustainable agriculture, food insecurity, and health and poverty. You will follow a specific stream you are interested in and go in depth into understanding both the theoretical and practical solutions and obstacles to having a positive impact on a community in this area.

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.

Want to know more about the IMF or the Federal Reserve? Interested in the European Central Bank and the European Stability Mechanism? Examine these international financial institutions to evaluate their existence, policies and effects on the international monetary system. Understand the institutional framework within which international financial relations are organised.

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.

How are financial markets organised? And what role do they play in the economy? Examine the main elements in modern finance. Study the activities of financial institutions and the main financial markets. Understand the theory and practice of financial regulation, looking at recent regulatory reforms.

What mathematical methods can analyse economic problems? And what mathematical tools are needed to understand economic models? Gain an introduction to the mathematical methods commonly used in economics, build your knowledge of mathematical tools for work in economics and develop your understanding of the mathematical language used in economic literature.

Which econometric methods can analyse economic data? How do you critically assess applied economic literature? Learn how to carry out statistical and econometric calculations, plus gain experience of using the Stata software package. Demonstrate your subsequent understanding of the linear regression model with your own investigation on an empirical issue.

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.

What constitutes a good piece of research? You consider the basics of scientific work and procedures in the social sciences in order to understand the philosophy and theory of social scientific investigations, and to improve your research throughout your degree.

What is a public good? Why do people pollute? What is collective action, and what forms does it take? This module provides students with theoretical and empirical insights to understand and analyse problems of collective action – i.e. situations in which members of communities need to coordinate shared interests. The module introduces the analytical concepts of collective action and presents applied local and global cases. The course also covers some of the most important questions about the aims and tools of economic policy.

Why do some people participate in politics and others do not? Why have voting rates plummeted in most democracies across the globe? What factors cause political violence? And what are the implications of inequalities in political participation for public policies? This module studies different forms of political behaviour ranging from voter turnout to terrorism. It combines micro- and macro-level perspectives and covers trends in political participation around the globe.  

Does everyone in a political party subscribe to the same core ideology? How do you pick which party to vote for? How do you persuade more people to vote? You examine party systems, party competition, electoral behaviour and party organisation in advanced liberal democracies.

How has the UK political system changed over the last 20 years? Centring on the decline of the traditional Westminster Model of democracy and its replacement by a political system in which power is more dispersed, you explore topics including devolution, Britain’s relationship with the EU, coalition government, the Human Rights Act, and the changing party system.

How can we answer political questions using statistical data? Learn how to find relevant research designs and questions in order to use quantitative methods in political research, assisting you in your other modules and improving your job prospects.

Given the rise of groups such as the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, the focus on violent non-state actors has become more and more important. You discover why non-state actors resort to violence and crime, what tactics and strategies they use, how they fund their existence, how they undermine the state and what can be done to counter the instability they cause.

How should we approach relationships between different countries? Explore different theoretical lenses through which the world can be viewed, including bargaining theory, liberal institutional approaches, and emotion-based, psychological models of the behavior of international political actions.

How do international organisations and NGOs contribute to and/or undermine development? What challenges do they face in developing countries? How do they try to achieve their aims, and what can they do to improve? You examine the key issues which face developing countries including debt, disease, famine and inequality, and how IOs and NGOs intervene in these situations.

Understand the evolving field of conflict resolution through exploring the causes and effects of armed conflict across the world, and scrutinising the theory and practice of how this can be managed peacefully.

Our world is increasingly globalised, and modernisation has led to a partitioning of the world into so-called developed, developing, and underdeveloped countries. You consider the development of the state and its influence over a society in the wake of globalisation in relation to the non-western world.

Learn to analyse the everyday politics of Sub-Saharan Africa: what are important socio-economic drivers and trends? What historical factors drive political development in Sub-Saharan Africa today? Study a variety of issues related to elections, development, and conflict with the tools of comparative politics, to understand both ordinary and particular political dynamics on the continent.

This module will introduce you to “principles of social justice”. These principles tell us how a political community should distribute resources and opportunities between individuals and groups. The module examines competing principles of social justice by examining the work of the most important political philosophers to have defended them and also applies these principles to concrete social and political issues.

Understand how politics and social life is shaped by language and meaning. Draw out the implications of political speech, social norms, and debate for how we act and think as citizens and social beings as you explore the intimate relationship between political rhetoric, discourse and power.  

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.

How are decisions made in the EU? What impact do states and government have on European policy, and vice versa? Gain an understanding of the relationship between the EU and its members through studying the origins of European Integration and the institutional systems of the EU.

This module offers an exploration of the extent of writing on the environment, on landscape and the natural world in a time of increasing awareness of a global climate emergency. A number of primary non-fiction and fiction texts will be selected for discussion in seminars. In addition there will be choice literatures of eco-critical writing and contemporary eco-political works such as the Peoples Manifesto for Wildlife and material by Extinction Rebellion. The course will extol the virtues of the outdoor classroom -- extending learning beyond the seminar walls to explore the nature of Wivenhoe Park and through a field trip. Students will be encouraged to extend their knowledge in multidisciplinary ways to enhance their ability to analyse and write literatures of the environment.

What is the nature and limits of human knowledge? Does our common-sense view of the world have a philosophical foundation? Does sensory experience provide the only path to knowledge of the world or can we gain knowledge through the exercise of pure reason? What role, if any, does God play in knowledge? What is the relation between the body and the mind? Do we know that the sun will rise tomorrow? Study the philosophical texts of the modern era that helped lay the conceptual foundations for these questions and others. We will begin with a close reading of Descartes' Meditations before exploring both rationalist (Spinoza and Leibniz) and empiricist (Locke and Hume) responses.

This module explores the relationship between religion and existentialism. For some key figures, existentialism takes “the death of God"" as its point of departure and never looks back. For these authors, existentialism represents an intrinsically atheistic philosophical outlook. Others, however, argue that the problems of existence that existentialism lays bare can only be overcome by a religious approach to life. We will explore this issue through a close reading of key texts in the tradition, which we will supplement by viewing and discussing two films inspired by the existentialist tradition.

This is a module in ethical theory rather than applied ethics – that is, it takes up theoretical questions about the status and justification of morality rather than addressing directly practical moral problems. The exact focus will vary from year-to-year. This year, we will investigate one of the most influential modern theories of ethics, Kant’s moral philosophy. While you might have had a chance to study some aspects of Kant’s view before, this term will be devoted to a focused critical reading of Kant’s ethical theory. We will investigate Kant’s conception of morality and his attempt to derive morality from his conception of freedom. Our texts will be Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and occasional selections from Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals.

Since the financial crisis of 2008, the social consequences, moral status, and even long-term viability of capitalism have come under renewed scrutiny. Does it foster economic growth and protect individual freedom, as its proponents claim? Or is it a destructive system out of control, as its detractors argue? Should the market be given even freer rein? Or should capitalism be reformed and restricted? Or should it be abolished and replaced altogether? And, if so, what would replace it?

“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.

The module will give you a deeper understanding of our intellectual and socio-political history, as well as a more profound perspective on the still active debates stemming from the positions taken by these philosophers – principally, concerning the nature of freedom, power, and democracy, and the role of the state. Questions we will be considering include: What is political authority? Why prefer democracy over other forms of political organisation? What is freedom and is freedom compatible with being a subject of a state? Is inequality an inevitable consequence of society? We will analyse critically the different answers given to these questions by Hobbes, Spinoza and Rousseau, and consider whether their philosophical accounts of the state and society provide us with a useful means of engaging with contemporary social and political issues.

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.