University of Birmingham

Birmingham, UK

APPLY
www.birmingham.ac.uk
Available Courses

This course develops students’ understanding of consumer research and its usefulness for marketing management. Drawing on disciplines such as sociology, psychology and consumer culture studies, it examines the consumer both as an individual and as a member of other groups and cultures. It looks in detail at areas including the decision process, learning, perception, involvement, attitude reformation and change, personality, motivation, reference groups and culture.

This course is designed to provide students with an opportunity to acquire a more in-depth understanding of the nature, function and development of global law by engaging with a series of contemporary issues.



This course is designed to encourage students to reflect on recent developments and study key conundrums in the field of public international law and globalisation such as gender and development, the persistence of widespread poverty migration of environmentally displaced persons, humanitarian crises, global trade, banking and finance, health and medicine, and the governance of emergent technologies and free and Open Source Software Licensing.

This course explores the ways in which world cinema transgresses the boundaries of the nation-state. Focusing on key films from across a range of geographies, the module examines how contemporary filmmakers work increasingly beyond the confines of their own national cinemas while engaging with an ever-widening array of multicultural themes and influences. In analysing films from perspectives that look beyond the nation-state, students will also be supported in considering a range of different filmmaking genres and styles including adaptation, auteur cinema, and diasporic cinema.

This course introduces students to the legacy and role of Shakespeare in twentieth and twenty-first century culture. It is divided into two study blocks, focused on Shakespeare in the theatre and Shakespeare in education. Students will explore a number of Shakespeare’s plays as they have been and are used and interpreted within these contexts.

The course aims to give students an overview of the demand for and supply of energy, the technologies involved, and the main economic and policy issues. The topics covered are: the demand for energy, fossil fuels, electricity generation (conventional, nuclear and renewable), hydrogen, electricity networks, electricity markets, investment decisions, energy security, energy and the environment, and energy policy.

This course explores foundational concepts and issues in the study of English language and linguistics. In particular, the course focuses on the areas of phonetic/phonology, morphology and lexical semantics. Topics covered include how the sounds of a language pattern and how they can be described, how words enter the language and how they relate to one another and carry meaning.

The course is about understanding and explaining leaders and leading. We explore what leadership is – and debate the difference leadership makes and why. We introduce leadership theory – discuss the contribution(s) and limits of theory – and discuss and debate varieties of leadership experience across different ‘real life’ settings.



The course then introduces students to the ideas of critical reflection and self-reflexivity in leadership studies – and in relation to the ‘actual & real’ enactment of leading/leadership. We discuss and debate the limits and possibilities of leadership. In the small group seminars, we help students to begin to develop a sense of their own leadership potential and aptitude(s). Finally, students are introduced to the most recent thinking and ideas in leadership studies around leading in/for ‘responsible business’ and in relation to debates around diversity and inclusivity.

This course examines the major geological natural hazards (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, ground stability and landslide hazards, tsunamis, bolide impacts) in terms of driving geological processes and human impacts. The theoretical background behind each hazard is addressed, placing processes in a wider geological context, examining the key physical principles driving each process, and considering frequency and magnitude relationships. Concepts of risk and vulnerability are introduced via a range of case studies, examining factors that have led to natural disasters. Methods of hazard assessment and monitoring are investigated, with case-study examples, to consider the forecasting and mitigation of geological natural hazards.

This course provides a thorough foundation in the historical concepts and categories employed in the analysis of works of art. Examples include: the meaning of style; artistic ‘schools’; iconography and symbolism; the meaning of ‘genre’ and different artistic genres; the distinction between ‘fine’ and ‘applied’ art; the figure of the artist. These themes are explored in relation to individual artworks that are studied both in reproduction and also in situ, in the Barber or in external visits to, for example, galleries and museums in Birmingham and London.

This course deepens students’ understanding of International Relations theory, and introduces them to some of the discipline’s most debated issues. Through in-depth discussions of problems and themes of past and current international relations, students are invited to stand critical of different theoretical approaches, their claims and methods, and the impact they have on knowledge of practice of international relations.

This course is designed to enable students to understand legal issues relevant to the role and practices of professional accountancy. The course introduces students to the role and nature of law, and explains how companies are formed, and the role and responsibilities of company officers. Students learn about contract law and issues of negligence in relation to accounting. The module explains the role of trusts, and legal and regulatory issues relating to intellectual property and information technology.

This course provides an introduction to legal ethics and professional responsibility based on an introduction to ethics more generally which examines various theories of ethical responsibility. Through a problem based approach it explores the applicability of ethical analysis to legal practice. In doing so it assists law students in their first semester of study to understand the concept of a profession and the obligations which might follow from this. In particular it will place some emphasis on the wider responsibilities of lawyers in the communities with which they engage.



The course will explore the nature and purpose of professional conduct rules and surrounding questions of regulation and enforcement. The substantive issues included in the problems on which the students will work will be drawn from everyday ethical dilemmas of practice including potential conflicts of interest, legal privilege and other questions of confidentiality, responsibilities to the court and to the client and how these may be negotiated, obligations arising out of fiduciary duties, and wider issues of access to justice.

The course provides an exploration of key issues in language acquisition and literacy. It expands on the coverage of child language introduced in the first year English Language curriculum. It introduces students to theories on early literacy, looking at how children move beyond acquisition to learning how to read and write.

In this course, students will explore the lived dimensions of religion in Birmingham and the wider region. They will examine the links between Birmingham’s complex vibrant, urban, religious and secular landscape and how this relates to the UK and world as a whole, by following growth and changes in the diverse range of religious communities of Birmingham. Through lectures, site visits, seminars, and workshops students will develop key skills for the study of lived religions.

This course examines the role of mass media in politics. Being one of the major, if not the most pervasive sources of political information, mass media influence the political arena, government policies, and public opinion. Lectures address empirical and theoretical points on political communication and public opinion literatures, and understand the motivations and practices of the main agents associated with the process of political communication: the media and journalists, the audience, and political actors (parties, leaders and candidates). The course covers material on the role of mass media in politics, the process of news making, processes such as media concentration and censorship, and the effects that media have on citizens’ political attitudes and behaviour.

This course is part of the foundation year and therefore is compulsory. The purpose of the course is to draw organisational analysis, management and entrepreneurial thinking together, extracting the implications from different strands of organisational thinking, and highlighting the conceptual issues implied in management problems. It focuses on different aspects of organisations – their relationship to the individuals who constitute them, to social groups and cultures, networks and markets, governance and goals. Drawing upon transaction cost thinking, each organisation is treated as a work in progress that has permeable boundaries and may always give birth to new enterprise.



The course therefore aims to provide a practice-based introduction to understanding and developing core entrepreneurial capabilities and awareness. Its focus will be on developing student’s opportunity recognition abilities, team entrepreneurship skills and their analytical competences in designing and presenting feasible business opportunities. Learning is facilitated and reinforced through practical case studies and exercises conducted in a series of seminar classes. Students on the course will be expected to develop their own business idea – developed through a series of workshops and consultation activities.

This course introduces students to the major theories that have impacted upon social policy and welfare provision since the 19th century. The focus will be upon British social policy and introduces students to a number of historical phases that mark discrete ideological and theoretical stages: ‘laissez faire liberalism’, the ‘golden age’ of social democracy, ‘Thatcherism’, ‘Third Way’ and ‘Coalition’. The course will then introduce a number of critical perspectives, such as Marxist, feminist, anti-racist, and post-modernist, that have sought to challenge these dominant philosophies of welfare.

This course links directly with engineering and business strategy development, demonstrating how programmes and projects are derived from a business intent. It describes the ontology and structure of projects and develops the role of a project manager in planning and delivering the required benefits for the enterprise.

This course will introduce students to a broad range of topics from the Early Modern period (c.1500-1800). It will examine many aspects of the early-modern world, including its social, economic, military, political, intellectual, religious and cultural history, some of which will be framed within a global context. Drawing on particular areas of staff expertise in social, economic, religious, gender, cultural history and material culture, the course will discuss the important changes that took place during this period and expose students to the ways these can be studied.

This course will allow students to develop a specialised interest in British politics. Students will examine key trends and ‘topics’ in British politics from an historical, conceptual and policy-related perspective. The course opens with six lectures aimed at providing students with an overview of key developments in, and scholarship on, post-war British politics, prior to more focused seminar work on a range of topics. The lectures cover key developments in postwar British politics, debates about state institutions and civil society in Britain and analytical approaches to studying topics in British politics.

In the seminars students will be asked to examine specific ‘topics’ in British politics through the lens of the key themes outlined in the lecture series. The topics are as follows: Political Change in Postwar; Britain; ‘Blairism’ and New Labour; Cameron and the Transformation of the Conservative Party; Constitutional Reform in Contemporary Britain.