Queen Mary University of London

London, United Kingdom

APPLY

www.qmul.ac.uk

Available Courses

Taught by numerous site visits to historic buildings alongside lectures and seminars, this course introduces students to the study of architecture by exploring buildings in the London area from the start of the seventeenth century to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837. During the course, we will witness London burn to the ground, be comprehensively rebuilt, and then expand from a small European capital into the largest city in the world. Along the way, we will encounter a wide variety of buildings including cathedrals, palaces, churches, synagogues, breweries, shops, and hospitals. Students will acquire skills in looking at, reading, and understanding buildings and become adept at using them as historical evidence. Students will also learn how to relate architecture to its social, political, and intellectual context, and develop insights into the ways that buildings may carry and convey meaning, whether to an expert or to a more general audience. No prior knowledge of architecture or architectural history is required to undertake the course.

When did the world become ‘globalised’? Who were the main architects of ‘globalisation’? How did the movement of ideas, people, money, and goods across borders reshape politics, society, and culture in diverse contexts? How did societies and groups around the world respond to and in turn reimagine this historical process? This module looks at key moments in the history of globalisation over the `long¿ twentieth century. Approaching globalisation as a contested and malleable project, we will move from the `first¿ high age of globalisation and empire in the late nineteenth century, through the reconfiguration of the world system in the wake of the Great Depression and the World Wars, to the era of decolonisation and neoliberal globalisation in the latter part of the century. We will reflect together on how capitalism, internationalism, empire, immigration, race, the environment, and human rights came to shape the contemporary world.

Over the last two centuries, Britain has changed beyond recognition. From the industrial revolution to the sexual revolution, new forces have transformed the lives of ordinary men and women. The rise and fall of the British Empire, a series of global wars and migration to and from Britain challenged what it meant to be British, while political institutions became increasingly democratic. In the sciences, the theory of evolution, the invention of television and the coming of the atom bomb offered exciting and sometimes terrifying possibilities, with far-reaching effects on British society. New forms of leisure emerged, while attitudes towards homosexuality, race, religion and the rights of women have been redrawn. This module provides a rich introduction to modern British history, from 1801 to the present day. If you have not previously studied the period, it will give you the foundation for specialist modules in subsequent years. If you have some prior knowledge, it will challenge you with new interpretations from the cutting edge of historical research. The module introduces you to new critical approaches to the subject and draws extensively on primary sources such as film, pop music and visual imagery. It has a strong global dimension, showing how crises in India, Asia and Africa shaped the ‘British World’. By the end of the module, you will have developed new skills in source analysis while challenging your preconceptions about modern Britain. Above all, we hope to enthuse you with the richness and diversity of British history, and the possibilities it offers for further study.

This course will introduce students to a wide range of texts, both historical and contemporary, and the skills they need to analyse them. It will be divided into two 5-week blocks, roughly divided between Literature Visual Cultures. Each block will be taught by a combination of lectures laying the ground work and seminars devoted to specific examples.

This module examines the study of security in world politics, investigating the development of the study of the international politics of security and the key concerns surrounding security today. The module broadly surveys different kinds of security practice and their contemporary significance. It also introduces political questions and contestations that both shape and are resulting from developments in security practice. Overall, the module gives a wide-ranging perspective on the politics of security in contemporary international politics.

London/Culture/Performance has four key aims: 1. To equip you with skills for analysing performance (as distinct from written text) (keyword: performance); 2. To facilitate your critical and productive engagement with London and the vast cultural resources, history and global connections it has to offer (keyword: London); 3. To introduce you to some current issues in cultural politics and critical ways of approaching them (keyword: culture); 4. To develop your critical skills in reading, research, writing, referencing, fieldwork and presentations. This module provides opportunities for you to explore the performance resources available in London and to develop your skills in using, understanding and responding critically to them.

The study of global supply chains is vital to understand the global dimension of business. This module investigates firms’ outsourcing strategies and their management, i.e. their growing practice to parcel out some activities from foreign suppliers. The module critically examines what value creating activities firms tend to outsource, how, why and to whom they outsource, and with what implications. Outsourcing is understood in a broad context characterised by multiple players, e.g. global institutions, states, consumers, trade unions and social movements.

What makes planet Earth so remarkable? Our planet is shaped by many interacting environmental systems operating from atomic through to global scales. Understanding the science of these systems is central to developing an advanced knowledge of the physical environment. This module explores fundamental Earth surface systems (e.g. tectonics, atmosphere & oceans, landscape development, climate change), focusing on core concepts, processes, their significance within a broader environmental context and their relevance to the human species.

This is an important subject for everyone who has an interest in business and wants to understand how innovation can affect the success and failure of firms. Successful innovation is a very complex process and has to be very carefully managed. There is no ‘right way’ to manage innovation. Therefore it is important to analyse the innovation process from a range of different perspectives, for example, the role of the state in innovation and the core competencies of the firm.

This module provides an introduction to the study of international relations. Specifically, we focus on four main themes that will allow you to grasp the complexities of the contemporary global order: capitalism, (post)colonialism, security, and development. You will also become acquainted with the analytical tools that are needed to think critically about international relations through these themes: a historical sensibility (i.e. how situations have elements of both continuity and change), an understanding of political-economy (i.e. why the economy is political), an understanding of the security-development nexus (i.e. how the quest for security – freedom from fear -and development – freedom from want -are contentiously linked), and the importance of resistance and “situated knowledges” (i.e. your understanding of international relations might be different depending on where and how you are situated in the world). Empirically, we will explore the Cold War and the post-Cold War global orders – their similarities and differences.

A geographical perspective on culture emphasises the processes and politics that produce spaces, places and landscapes, and how these in turn shape different cultures. The module is interdisciplinary in scope and explores a range of cultural landscapes, grounded in walking-based explorations of East London. Key themes include: different ways of seeing the world; geographies of embodiment; and cultures of urban nature and consumption. The overarching aim is that students will be prompted to reconsider and extend their own perspectives on cultural matters as they develop knowledge, intellectual tools and practical skills for making sense of the world around them.

This module will introduce students to a range of Victorian fiction. It addresses the content, form, and significance of the Victorian novel (famously nicknamed a ‘loose baggy monster’) and how it develops amid the cultural, historical, and intellectual contexts of nineteenth-century Britain. It also examines the alternative form of the short story and considers what specific kinds of narrative and narrative effects this form enables. Authors to be studied may include Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Lewis Carroll, Wilkie Collins, Dinah Mulock Craik, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Vernon Lee, Margaret Oliphant, Bram Stoker, and William Thackeray.

This module invites students to ways of reading London. Students will read London literary texts from the early modern period to the present day and encounter the city through walking, travelling along its transport connections, listening to guides, looking around them and engaging self-reflexively with the meanings and imperatives found in the city. The module will include walking lectures, seminars and workshops and will develop skills of close reading, observation, critical thinking and effective communication.

This module introduces you to the style, history, politics and controversies of modernism. We will read central modernist texts such as Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’, Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, and Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’, alongside a selection of modernist and modern writers, critics, journalists and intellectuals. Over eleven weeks, we will see how modernism developed in the 1910s and 20s, and examine a range of contexts for its stylistic experiments in narrative and point of view, in urban life, war, sexual emancipation, and psychology.

This module introduces theory and research in cognitive psychology, the study of the human mind and mental processes. Key theories and research in cognitive psychology will be discussed, including visual and multi-modal perception, attention, memory, language, reasoning, and decision-making. Experiments and studies from classical and modern cognitive psychology will be provided and discussed critically throughout to illustrate these concepts. This module will demonstrate the essential role of that cognitive psychology plays in everyday life.

This module introduces and critically discusses an area of special interest to applied psychologists, namely, psychology as applied to health behaviour. The course covers the central models and evidence bases concerning the relationship between psychological processes and health and illness. Topics covered by this module will include health promotion and public health; health behaviour models; illness maintenance and treatment adherence; chronic illness; and health through the lifespan.

Movement, mobility, migration: they have shaped and continue to shape individual lives, communities, nations, and the globe. This module raises questions about the historical nature of borders and belonging. In order to reflect on contingency and transformation, we take an expansive spatial and temporal approach, stretching from the medieval to the modern world and using case studies from both the Western and non-Western worlds. By doing so, we will question dichotomies between mobility and stability, as well as assumptions of borders and settledness. Themes and topics may include: exile, empire, race, state-making, minorities, borders and policing. Illustrative case studies may include Anglo-Dutch crossings of the Channel in the 18th century; Population transfers under the League of Nations aegis in the early 20th century; Passports for the Indian diaspora from the 1950s-70s.

This module provides a critical geographical framework for understanding the key issues of climate change, waste, population change and hazards and addressing questions of social and environmental justice. We begin by engaging with recent efforts to decolonise geography in light of the imperial origins of British geography and the historical and continued impact of European colonialism. This is the theme of our fieldtrip to the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). This provides a foundation for our focus on environmental racism and the unequal impacts of environmental change. Bringing together critical perspectives from human and physical geography, the module will equip you with knowledge and understanding of the causes, challenges and implications of these entangled social and environmental issues.

This module will introduce students to a range of core issues affecting the world around them from economic, cultural and social perspectives with a particular focus on the importance of global-local relations revolving around inequality and justice. It will explore a range of debates surrounding the interrelationships between globalisation and international development from historical and contemporary viewpoints as well as the nature and politics of identities in relation to nationalism, diaspora, landscape and exclusion . Students will also be introduced to the relationships between health, place and care.