Explore Culture, History & Humanities Courses

Metaphysics is concerned with fundamental philosophical questions about the nature of reality. Many of those questions naturally raise further philosophical questions about what we can know – questions of epistemology. This course is an introduction to some of the most historically significant approaches to such questions.

Portrait miniatures are some of the most exquisite likenesses ever produced, initially gaining favour in the court of Henry VIII as love tokens and tiny pieces of propaganda. This session in the V&A’s collection of portrait miniatures can be taken as a single stand-alone visit (no previous knowledge required, all welcome) or as a final lesson for the three-week online VB776 Private Portraits course.

Explore how historical, political, and economic factors have shaped Global South economies. Analyze trade, governance, urbanization, poverty, sustainability, and challenges, fostering a holistic understanding of their development within the global landscape.

This one day course brings together evidence from interviews with the ever decreasing number of original arrivals to the UK from Uganda, following Idi Amin’s expulsion in 1972.



Using oral history we ask questions of what we can learn from the personal testimony of individuals and what unique insights this gives us.

This course explores some of the most elaborate and powerful displays of the Graeco-Roman world. Designed to entertain, inform, and elicit support, often at times of great political or religious significance, they were unforgettable, and have long exercised an influence on our own understanding of the nature of power.

London is one of the world’s great cinematic cities. It is a city that has been captured on film since the advent of moving pictures. It is also a city whose own story has been profoundly shaped by film. This course will tell the history of London’s depiction onscreen, and how that depiction has impacted on the city itself over the course of twentieth and twenty-first centuries.







Dr Alexander Sergeant is an award-winning film historian and theorist. His varied research interests include the history of popular culture, particularly within the US, and the intersection between film and philosophy. He is the author of Encountering the Impossible: The Fantastic in Hollywood Fantasy Cinema (2021), and co-editor ofFantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums & Genres (2018). He is the co-founder of the popular website Fantasy-Animation.org and co-host of the Fantasy/Animation podcast.

The unfettered exploitation of natural resources by the Global North has led to an environmental catastrophe faced most severely and immediately by the Global South. Climate justice aims to deal with the inherent unfairness in the approaches to mitigate climate change and to help Global South adapt to its impacts,.

The figure of Satan/devil has pervaded many centuries of the cultural imagination of the Western world. The course will examine the literary and iconographic sources for this enduring phenomena and will ask why ideas about the devil have continued to both frighten and fascinate and why its long-lasting association with sexuality and deceit continues to make it an attractive theme in contemporary culture.

Discover who were the barbarians in the Ancient and Medieval World. How did the Chinese and the West interact with ‘the other’? Were the Vikings simply ‘long-haired tourists who occasionally roughed up the natives’ (Wallace-Hadrill 1975)?

To understand China of our present means understanding China of the past. Explore the histories and legacies of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

We explore medieval attitudes towards the disease and the medical care available to sufferers. We also look at how the leper was depicted in art and literature before 1500 CE.

Compare and contrast the afterlife beliefs of the five major religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Explore how these ideas developed and influenced each other.