University Study in the United Kingdom: Queen Mary University of London

This module, which will be taught on site in historic buildings, will introduce you to the history of London and its buildings from the late 17th century to the present day. This is an extremely dynamic period in London's history: nearly the entire city was destroyed and rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666, the city then saw huge increases in its population in the 18th century, and massive technological and social change in the 19th. The 20th century brought yet more destruction and rebuilding after the Blitz, alongside political and economic upheaval, all of which led to radical changes in the appearance of London's buildings. This century has seen huge new investment in the City, and the rise of gentrification in the suburbs.

Throughout the module, we will tell this story by visiting and considering many different types of buildings, from churches, hospitals, and palaces, to railway stations and housing estates. Along the way, we will explore questions of architectural style, the implications of social and cultural change for architecture, and urban and architectural history and theory more generally.

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British cinema is often celebrated for its social realism, yet has made significant and influential contributions to the worlds of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. From the Gothic tradition of Dracula to nightmarish visions of London in 28 Days Later and the spectacular popular fantasies of Doctor Who and Harry Potter, this course investigates this alternative history or ‘repressed underside’ of British cinema and the ways in which these films have responded to their social and cultural production contexts.

Introducing you to a range of critical approaches to film and literature and making full use of our unique London setting, we will engage with debates on the cultural appeal and social significance of horror and fantasy, and the nature of audiences and film spectatorship. Key topics for discussion will be the depiction of London and the East End as both a landscape of fear and wonder; the representation of women, gender and sexuality in horror and fantasy; the psychoanalytic interpretation of horror and the ways through which these films engage with the history of Britain and its capital. With an emphasis on cinema, we will also compare the writing of British authors with film adaptations of their work.

What does the future world of work look like? This module critically evaluates contemporary trends in the changing world of work. We focus on these trends with a view to understanding their implications for work, employment, and society. Some issues explored in this module are: automation and AI; emotional labor; flexible working; the platform economy; climate change; regulation and the role of the state; globalization. The extent to which COVID-19 has disrupted, or accelerated, such trends will also be explored throughout.

This module considers specific cognitive functions and properties of the human mind. The material will cover perception, attentional processes, language and knowledge representation, memory mechanisms, problem-solving and expertise, and the relationships and links between processes. Studies from classical and modern cognitive psychology will be provided throughout.

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This course will provide an introduction to the comparative politic of the US and UK.  We will use a comparative analysis to throw light on the political systems in both countries.

This module offers you an opportunity to put theory into practice, cultivating a sense of the history and theory of documentary film alongside the chance to make your own short non-fiction film. The theory part of the module charts the historical development of documentary through the examination of films ranging from the early twentieth century to the present day, with the focus on issues of truth, ethics, technique and creativity. The practical part of the module supports you to create and complete your own short documentary film. Four key issues are central to the modules: 1) locating the truth you want to convey; 2) ensuring that you adhere to an ethical code whilst producing your film; 3) engaging with storytelling, exposition, visual and structuring techniques, including considering how meaning is made in post-production and 4) exploring creative formal approaches appropriate to your film.

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This module examines how environmental challenges have been, and continue to be, shaped by empire. These impacts affect how Earth's history, the biosphere, and the climate are known, and extend to both extractive technologies and financial relationships that enable extraction. But the effects of empire run deeper, to the very way the environment is understood. Using London as a launchpad for field trips and firsthand encounters, this module challenges you to rethink how ideas of the planet’s past, present, and future are shaped by empire.

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This summer course will provide clear understanding of the different types of environmental exposures that are related with pathogenic mechanisms of human diseases. The first section will review the natural environment (land, water, air, energy) and its impact on health indicators, as well as nutritional content of food and nutraceuticals. The second section will focus on the built environment (housing, urban vs. rural landscapes, transport, work) and the relation of our living conditions with health outcomes. The third section will review the effects of the psychosocial environment (mental health, stress, socialization, financial status) on the public health. The fourth section will expand on the microenvironment features (microbiome) and the epigenetic effects (gene-by-environment interactions) that modulate disease mechanisms. The final section of the course will focus on the combined and synergistic impact of all different types of the environment on health indicators. It will also showcase the added value of multidisciplinary approaches to evaluate the combined impact of environment on health and disease.

How and why are Shakespeare’s plays performed, filmed, read and taught, from China to Chile, from Singapore to South Africa? What makes Shakespeare a “global” force? Shakespeare's plays display the vast panoply of human desires and emotions: from passionate love to bewildering fear, from unswerving loyalty to basest envy, from the noblest instances of self-sacrifice to the desire to inflict unspeakable pain. His depictions of these emotions are often shocking in their vividness, yet always recognizable as fundamental facets of human experience. This course will look at Shakespeare’s afterlives in different parts of the world, and include hands-on workshops in which we will try out different possible ways of interpreting “global” plays like Antony and Cleopatra.

International criminal justice is at a crossroads. On the one hand, we now have an unprecedented ability to prosecute individuals accused of torture, genocide, and crimes against humanity both domestically and internationally, emblematic of the extent to which these kinds of prosecutions have become normalized over the last 70 years. On the other hand, more and more countries have raised concerns about the efficacy and fairness of international criminal prosecutions, arguing that they are selective or neocolonialist, biased or myopic. This is exemplified by the complex status and reception of the International Criminal Court, alternately lionized and criticized. This module introduces you to these debates and examines the legal and philosophical underpinnings of international criminal law and justice.

Key topics in this course will be:

• The development of the laws that govern international criminal justice, including detailed study of the laws against torture, genocide, crimes against humanity, and aggression. 
• The philosophical and historical origins of international criminal justice.
• The courts and tribunals that adjudicate these kinds of crime, including the International Criminal Court.

• The key challenges facing the greater implementation of these kinds of criminal prosecutions, including the role of politics and of the international community, and questions of sovereignty and human rights.

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This course offers a broad overview of public international law and its various areas, its relations to politics, and current challenges of the international legal system. The focus will be on the theoretical background of international law as well as its practical implications in our globalized world. It will provide a critical, analytical, and stimulating perspective on the nature and scope of international law for every scholar interested in this field. Furthermore, our location in London will offer you access to law firms exclusively dedicated to international law (such as Volterra Fietta), and to international organizations based in London (such as the International Maritime Organisation and the Commonwealth of Nations, International Coffee Organisation).

Teaching in lectures and seminars will be supplemented with a number of structured study sessions, such as a supervised library skills workshop, and assessment preparation for the coursework.

This dynamic course will provide you with an opportunity to learn about some of the key legal skills which are used in practice to become a successful, ethical lawyer and professional. It will help you understand the theory behind these skills within the classroom and participate in practical workshops and activities where they will use and develop certain skills.  There will be also be three practical activities where the students will see legal skills in practice and have an opportunity to reflect on the skills presented. Some of these skills include; client interviewing, drafting, case file management, principles of privacy and confidentiality, the ethics of lawyering, team work, advocacy, presentation and facilitation skills, researching the law, legal design, reflection and being a life-long learner.

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Through visits to ten of London’s most important institutions, this module will examine the development of how institutions curate culture from Renaissance ‘cabinets of curiosities’ to the modern ‘white cube’ gallery space. The module will equip you with the historical, theoretical, and practical knowledge necessary for studying culture through institutional collections. The class will analyze the techniques and practices museums use to collect, organize, and display their objects; we will consider the messages these institutions send through their architecture, patronage, and methods of display; and we will delve into some of the most important issues affecting cultural institutions today like decolonization, repatriation, and social impact. Aside from the introductory class, the module will take place off campus, with seminar groups visiting a different institution in each meeting.

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You will be studying London through visits, tours, talks, walks, screenings, and events, and from this develop your knowledge of the city and the town's history and culture. The scope of the study will be by period and locale with directed and self-directed study, so you are able to follow your own interests; history, politics, music, fashion, cinema, art, literature. This is a summer course for those who want to learn about London by seeing and experiencing it. The teaching will focus your research skills and your practical skills in photography and writing though practice-based workshops in photography, journalism, and creative writing.

What is a city? Is it constituted of buildings? People? Institutions? This module introduces the city as a series of dynamic practices: the movement of people; the proposition of highways and alleyways, green spaces and social housing; the configuration and scheduling of transport; the regulation and timetabled glow of light; the whiffs and breezes and pockets of air pollution. It is also the circulation of ideas and the pulse of affect. This module offers a series of weekly encounters with the literary and performative city. You will study a range of literary and theoretical texts, and walk London, traveling along its transport connections, listening to guides, looking around yourself, and engaging self-reflexively with the meanings and imperatives found in the city.

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This module's interactive learning sessions allow you to acquire the hands-on and on-screen experience you need in exploring the rapidly evolving landscape of machine learning and data science. You will work collaboratively to draw conclusions and extract useful information from available datasets while gaining the invaluable skills on how to interpret and report your analysis and results for informed decision making purposes.

This is a practical module that provides an introduction to the concepts of machine learning and application of algorithms to several types of available data samples. In order to achieve this, you will be introduced to the Python programming language and key concepts related to the TensorFlow (TM) programming toolkit from Google. At the end of the module, you will have learned how to train machine learning algorithms and evaluate your performance on research data. Programming skills will be developed during this module in order to explore the potential benefits of deep learning algorithms.

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Why is diversity good for businesses? What can leaders do to make their organizations more inclusive? This module will explore these and other questions by introducing you to a range of theories and practical issues relevant to managing diversity in contemporary organizations. You will learn why inclusion matters, how diversity relates to business and organizational success, and explore case studies related to different dimensions of diversity like gender, age, race, and so on. We will then discuss various theories that help us understand why diversity and inclusion issues continue to persist in organizations and the labor market. For instance, why do some professions continue to be male- or female dominated? Where does gender pay gap come from? Can recruitment be unbiased? The module will then explore how to apply theory to practice and explore how to design and deliver effective diversity initiatives in organizations.

Is the work of Taylor Swift literature?

You may have seen articles, in publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to Teen Vogue, about seminars  on Taylor Swift that were recently offered at some American universities. These university-level classes on Swift's work and its form, context, and implications raise all kinds of questions about what should be taught, read, and studied. Is Swift's work literature, and is it worth studying in the same way that one would study Shakespeare or Dickens? In this module, we will grapple with ideas of canonicity and literary value and think about what it means to read something as literature. 

This module suggests that the lyrics of Taylor Swift can and should be read as literature. In doing so, we will pay close attention to formal elements such as rhyme and word choice. We will also analyze her songs with the help of key texts in critical theory and discuss the political, national, and historical contexts of her work. Queen Mary's London setting will encourage us to pay particular attention to the way in which the UK, and London in particular, figures in Swift's lyrics.

This course will address the impact of trauma on mental health as a lifelong process interrupted in some significant way by the pandemic of COVID-19. The work of researchers to understand mental health conditions will be supplemented by case studies that provide opportunity for you to glimpse examples of the life stories behind diagnoses. This course will address the challenge of mental health to the field of medicine as a whole. In a recently published book The Myth of Normal, leading trauma academic Dr. Gabor Maté suggests society is built on a hidden assumption of trauma passed through generations and presented visibly in the individual as physical and psychological conditions diagnosed by doctors. While diagnostic labels help individuals understand mental health problems, the interactions between doctor and patient may be limited should there not be a parallel effort to recognize the societal factors that contribute to ill health. Through a combination of theory and reflective accounts of ill health the module will illustrate the mechanisms by which life experiences impact the mind and reflect on whether the pandemic modified these.

This course will provide you with an introduction to some basic political theory, a history of international politics and global governance, and to the structure of the global political economy. You will then be given an opportunity to learn about the actors, structures, and politics of global health governance and international health policy. This will include learning about global actors such as WHO, the Gates Foundation, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, as well as the role of civil society organizations and social movements in promoting global health equity.

With these basic building blocks in place, we will examine the following contemporary health issues through a social and political lens: health financing and health sector reform; global pandemic threats and the securitization of health; the effects of armed conflict on health; and the influence of trade and business on health.

We will also examine health inequalities within the local area of East London—a part of London which includes both some of the most deprived households in the country, as well as one of the biggest financial and banking hubs in the world. This will include a field trip, as well as a global health 'treasure hunt' in the British Museum.

This course is a basic introduction to the dynamics of time dependent data. We will start by discussing the type of data to be analysed. A part from typical single number time series such as temperatures or stock prices, we will also consider the evolution of geospatial variables, 3D and text data.

This will be followed by the some basic Exploratory Data Analysis in the context of time dependent data. The course will then provide insights on how time dependent data can be analysed based on real world examples and applications. Areas of applications that might be considered are speech, stock market evolution, music, geospatial data such as MRI scans, and medical time series data used in diagnostics.

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This course is centered on hands-on projects to provide you with practical experience. The range of data examples are general and cover a broad range of subject areas and industries.

The course covers the following broad areas:

1. Acquisition and preparation of data. EDA. Basic Visualizations. Best practices.
2. Visual Analytics of geospatial data (geographical data, MRI scan data,...)

3. Time series data. Visualization of trends, seasonalities, and cycles. Possible applications to medical data (eg. apnea incidence, brain signals) or social media sentiment analysis. Building interactive dashboards and reporting results.

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