Issues Facing Our World

This course explores why greater global cooperation is needed if sustainable development goals are to be achieved in the face of global risks.

Discover the history of foreign affairs in modern British politics, from the UK’s relationships with key allies and trading partners, to conflicts in the Middle East and post-colonial relations in Asia.

This course explores how filmmakers across the world have used cinema to confront, question, and reimagine the legacies of colonialism through memory and history. Focusing on specific films from Lebanon, Palestine, Taiwan, the Philippines, Chile, Africa, and the diasporas, we will examine how cinema has become a crucial medium for addressing historical violence, displacement, silence, and resistance in postcolonial societies. These films span fiction, documentary, essay film, and experimental modes, and they engage with topics including gendered memory, forbidden histories, colonial amnesia, Indigenous erasure, exile, diaspora, and intergenerational trauma. Cinema emerges here as both a site of remembrance and a space of counter-history: a medium through which suppressed stories can be visualised, and emotionally reactivated in the present.

Please note that for those students who have taken previous versions of this course, the selection of films and the topics covered will be different from past iterations of the course.

The humanities - academic disciplines that study human society and culture, including literature, visual and performing arts, philosophy and history - are under threat of funding cuts across all sectors of education. Their “cultural capital” is waning alongside. The focus, instead, is on subjects that promise immediate gain in the form of guaranteed employment and economic growth for the investing state. But does such an approach pay off in the long run? As many theorists argue, the humanities teach vital skills of how to be a responsible citizen in a globalised world.

An exploration of major economic crises from the 17th century to today-uncovering what causes them, how they reshape societies, and the lessons they leave behind.

Will COP 31 address theunprecedentedthreats that climate change posesto society and the environment, or do we need more ambitious global solutions?

Explore the history of key general elections in recent British history, including Thatcher’s 1979 victory, the rise of New Labour, and the success and downfall of the Conservatives in the 21st century. Discover how the outcome of elections is shaped by party leadership, communications, policy, the media, and more.