This module is designed to provide you with a broad introduction to the culture, history and language of Spain, Latin America and the Spanish speaking World. By studying various types of primary and secondary sources, you will become familiar with a wide range of themes, events and ideas from the regions. All materials will be available in English, allowing students with little or no knowledge of the Spanish language to engage with the module.
This prepares you for the rest of the programme and so it is intended to support you in concurrent and subsequent modules by developing your skills with the statistical analyses that are used in quantitative approaches to research. You will develop your understanding of how to plan statistical analyses, how to carry out a bivariate statistical analysis, and how to use the results of a statistical analysis to advance scientific knowledge in a given area. You will use all of this knowledge to complete a partially written research report by carrying out a statistical analysis of a real-world educational dataset and then writing-up the results of this analysis in a critical manner.
The theory and methods of Statistics play an important role in all walks of life, society, medicine and industry. They enable important understanding to be gained and informed decisions to be made, about a population by examining only a small random sample of the members of that population. For example, to decide whether a new drug improves the symptoms of a disease in all those diagnosed as having the condition (the population), a clinical trial might be undertaken in which a sample of people who receive the new drug is compared with a sample receiving no active treatment. Such statistical inferences about a population are subject to uncertainty - what we observe in our particular sample (or samples) may not hold for the whole population. Probability theory and statistical distributions are needed to quantify this uncertainty, and assess the accuracy of our inference about the population. This module aims to lay foundations in probability and distribution theory, data analysis and the use of a statistical software package, which will be built upon in later modules. The module begins by introducing statistical data analysis by using the freely available R package, https://cran.r-project.org/. Statistical analysis and report writing are discussed along with the use of the R software package for summarising and interpreting data. It then formally defines probability and studies the key properties. The concepts of random variables as outcomes of random experiments are introduced and the key properties of the commonly used standard univariate random variables are studied. Emphasis is placed on learning the theories by proving key properties of each distribution. Basic ideas of statistical inference, including techniques of point and interval estimation and hypothesis testing, are introduced and illustrated with practical examples.
This module will develop your critical knowledge and understanding of aspects of the work and lives of teachers in schools and relate this to your own experience. You will develop an understanding of key themes relating to teachers, teaching and classroom practice. Themes might include recent research on effective teaching and teacher development, education policies which affect teachers and portrayals of teachers in popular culture.
The Ancient World has profoundly influenced subsequent generations of history, and helps us to understand the foundations of today’s world. This module provides an introduction to this momentous period of history from Dark Age Greece to the emergence of Islam. We will explore major civilisations including Classical Greece, the Hellenistic world, the Roman Republic, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire up to the rise of Islam. This module will introduce you to central themes in Greek, Roman and Byzantine history, assessing political processes, socio-cultural changes and ideological developments. A wide array of evidence will be investigated from the literary to the material and visual, such as historical writings, art, architecture, archaeology, inscriptions, and philosophy. Throughout we will ask major questions: what were the key turning points and markers of change in the Ancient World? What were the distinctive features of the major ancient civilisations? How did the dominant civilisations interact with other cultures and societies under their rule? Importantly, we will also investigate the reception of the Ancient World: how has it been understood by subsequent generations and what is its significance and impact throughout history? In this way, the module will provide you with an overview and important background knowledge that will support you in the rest of your degree and beyond.
This module is designed to provide you with a broad introduction to the diverse cultures and histories of the Portuguese-speaking or ‘Lusophone’ world. By studying various texts, films, images and digital materials, from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first, you will become familiar with a wide range of themes, events and ideas from across the three main regions of the Portuguese-speaking world: Portugal, Brazil and Portuguese-speaking Africa. All written texts are available in English translation, and all films are available with English subtitles, allowing students with little or no prior knowledge of Portuguese language or the Portuguese-speaking world to engage with the module.
This module will consolidate and expand your specialist cardiac knowledge and practice. You will be introduced to invasive cardiology including cardiac catheterisation led procedures and cardiac rhythm management (CRM). These invasive procedures detect, quantify and treat cardiac pathologies. Clinical specialists will guide and support you through this fascinating complex world ready for your year 3 clinical placement and work towards becoming a qualified cardiac physiologist.
During this module you will explore some of the new and innovative practices and challenges facing education. The module begins by examining innovation in a wider sense, such as the changing curriculum or the challenges of globalisation, but then moves to a closer examination of eLearning, one of the more noticeable challenges facing education practices.
The module brings together a range of ideas, subject-matter and methods of making, to open up deeper understanding of the scope and potential of contemporary art practice. There is an emphasis on non-traditional media, encompassing performance and the digital.
Computer networking is a core technology of the internet of things; without it, ‘things’ would be unable to communicate with each other or report data. This module is concerned with how IoT device network with each other, from the structure and purpose of layers in protocol stacks, through to example IoT protocols, state-of-the-art directions, and security implications. A key part of the module is the coursework, in which students design and implement their own network protocol(s) in either simulation or hardware. This module is taught together with ELEC3227 Embedded Networked Systems. This module and ELEC3227 are mutually exclusive. This module has higher requirements on the desired learning outcomes, which will be assessed by a different coursework assignment.
At the end of the taught phase of the IPhD in Applied Linguistics/ELT, you will work under supervision towards the preparation of a doctoral research proposal. This is non-credit-bearing Masters-level module, however progression from year 1 of the IPhD (from the taught phase to the doctoral phase) is dependent upon successful completion of this proposal, which must be passed at 65% or higher.
Iron Age Europe witnessed the divergence of a ‘classical' Mediterranean world, whose culture included such features as states, towns, coinage and literacy, from a ‘barbarian' world to the north, where these features developed only much later, if at all. This module will examine the evidence for this period in Britain and Ireland: the adoption of new technologies, especially iron; changes in agricultural production; the social significance of food and drink; the construction of hillforts such as Maiden Castle and the sort of society who lived in them; the growth of more specialised systems of production and exchange. One important theme is the connection between Britain and the continent and the expanding power of the Roman Empire. There were important social transformations in the Late Iron Age, especially in southern England: key questions include the relative importance of indigenous factors and connections with Rome, and the extent of social and political evolution before the Roman conquest: how urban were sites such as Colchester and Silchester, which became important towns after the Roman conquest.
The historical memory of the West has always dissociated religion from the revolutionary ideal, from the Enlightenment principles that opposed it. From a Western perspective, Islam denoted tradition, while revolution represented change. However, in many Islamic societies, sociopolitical movements have been closely intertwined with Islam. From the 1979 Revolution in Iran to the Arab Spring of 2012, revolutionary movements were expressed in religious language. Therefore, revolution and change within an Islamic framework are not inherently contradictory. This module discusses the crisis of identity that Islam is experiencing today by examining two different definitions of Islam: Political Islam seeks to revive Islam's "golden age" by adhering to early Islamic principles and establishing states governed by Islamic law (e.g. al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taleban (in Afghanistan). Reformist Islam aims to modernize Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and reform sharia law to meet contemporary needs. However, reformist Islam—whether rooted in theoretical arguments or practical realities—is frequently overshadowed by the prevailing notion that equates Islamism exclusively with militant jihadist groups. Both political and reformist Islam challenge the traditional interpretations of Islam that prevailed until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The module examines these movements that manifest differently across diverse sociopolitical and historical contexts.
The module is designed to offer a comprehensive understanding of accounting, finance and governance of Islamic financial institutions and social financial services. This module will allow students to critically compare the ideal-ethical principles/theories and the practical implementation of Islamic banking, insurance and social financial institutions.
There is a growing demand for studying Islamic banking within a highly integrated global financial market. This module provides comprehensive insights over how Islamic finance operates and the structure of Islamic financial institutions in various national contexts.
There is a rich and often overlooked tradition of Islamic philosophy, or 'falsafa'. This module focuses on the classical period of the Islamic Golden Age, from Al-Kindi, via Ibn Sina (also known as Avicenna), to Ibn Rushd (also known as Averroes). The classical Islamic tradition played a central role in transmitting and transforming philosophical thought from the Ancient Greeks to the Early Moderns. Many distinctions familiar from the Early Modern tradition and not clearly present in Ancient Greek philosophy first started to take shape during this period, and Islamic philosophers made important contributions to topics such as the relation between the mind and the body, the distinction between essence and existence, arguments for the existence of God and concerning God’s nature, the metaphysical modalities of possibility, contingency, and necessity, and the nature of logic, science, religion, ethics, and philosophy itself. The aim of this module is to introduce some of the central views and arguments of classical Islamic philosophy and to explore and critically assess them in light of recent philosophical commentary.
Since the end of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980s, the modern world has witnessed the emergence of Islamist states and powerful Islamist political movements including in West Asia and the Near and Middle East: the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic in Iran, the Islamic Da’wa Party in Iraq, the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt, the Ennahda Party in Tunisia, and the Islamist Justice and Development Party in Turkey. Paradoxically, the rise of Islamism that is best known for its anti (or at least non)-Western characteristics, has been either tolerated or supported by the Western World and the United States in particular both as a discourse borne of Orientalism and as a political convenience during the last stages of the Cold War . In fact Islamist states in the region were considered by the West to constitute a new “security” belt that was to protect the Western interests against the Soviet Union and its successor, the Russian Federation. Unpredictable developments in Afghanistan and Iran, however, caused costly wars but in exchange provided more opportunities for the USA to consolidate its military presence in the Middle East and Central Asia.
The module aims to develop your critical awareness of Latin American music and dance cultures of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the ways that scholars have approached them. Rather than a survey of Latin American music, the course will be thematically focussed on issues which may include indigeneity; social inequalities and marginality; gender and sexuality; migration; ‘race’ and racism; nation-building and cosmopolitanism; politics, dictatorship and social movements; exoticism, folklore and transnationalism; scenes and countercultures; religion; violence. Although the focus will be on Latin American and Latinx popular musics, students may opt to explore Latin American art musics and/or other cultural practices in assessments. Genres and music cultures that may be explored include bolero, bossa nova, corrido, cumbia, danzón, mambo, Nueva canción, punk, rap, reggaeton, rock and roll, salsa, samba, son cubano and tango. The module will be based on the study of books and articles, and close listening and viewing of audio-visual materials.
This module considers a range of issues in the area of the sociology of the policy and policing and more broadly the sociology of social control - issues, include domestic violence, public order and policing minority groups.
The aim of every language course at the University is to enable you to communicate in your target language (TL) at that particular level and in your particular area of interest. We use the word ‘communicate’ in its widest sense, meaning that you will not only be able to talk to people in the language but also to develop your proficiency in listening, reading, and writing. This means that the module aims for you to understand all the things which affect communication in that language, including knowledge of how the language is used, how it works and how to analyse it, and the cultural contexts in which it is spoken. This particular module is aimed at complete beginners. Successful completion of the full Stage 1, over 2 semesters, is approximately equivalent to having reached Level A1 of the Common European Framework or a good GCSE. Taking this single semester module at Stage 1 will take you part of the way to the outcomes of the full Stage. You are encouraged to take a full language Stage if you want to make significant progress in the language you are learning.
This module explores the rich variety of Jewish life and the development of Jewish experience, including Antisemitism and violence from the ancient to the contemporary world. It introduces students to ideologies and cultures of antisemitism and examines attempts to theorise antisemitism as an historical and contemporary phenomenon; it places antisemitism within wider histories of racism and racialised thought. It also examines ideas, processes and experiences of emancipation, looks at histories of Jewish/non-Jewish economic, social, cultural and intellectual exchange, and examines Jewish experiences of violence such as pogroms and expulsion and Jewish community responses to persecution.
The module offers a broad introduction to Jewish history from the ancient to the contemporary period. The first part of this module introduces and explains important developments for the Jewish minority in Europe, focusing on the period between the Enlightenment to the end of the inter-War period, from the late 18th century to 1933. While this history has often been regarded as a prelude to the Holocaust, our module will look at this period from a Jewish perspective. What were the opportunities, and what were the risks, that ‘modern times’ held in store for a group that moved from the margins of society to its centre? We will look at the Jewish experience in Western and Eastern Europe. The second part of the module covers the persecution of the Jews during the Nazi era and then how that history has been remembered and represented but also how the Holocaust shaped the history of Jews after 1945.
German-Jewish history has often been regarded as ‘leading up to the Holocaust’. In this module we will explore the life and culture of Jews in Germany from the late C18th until the eve of the Nazi takeover in 1933. Starting with the Jewish enlightenment, initiated by philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729/1786), we see the emergence of a modernizing Jewish element within a modernizing German society and its capital city of Berlin. Here, all Jewish ‘fantasies’, from Assimilation to Zionism, have been played out, discussed, created tensions within the Jewish community and produced an unparalleled cultural creativity, particularly around the turn of the century and in the 1920s. Antisemitism in German society led to the establishment of Jewish organisations such as the Centralverein, but also to the development of a ‘Jewish renaissance’, a re-discovery of a Jewish identity nearly lost in the processes of modernization. Using a core set of primary sources as our foundation, we will trace Jewish life from the struggle for emancipation through to the cultural, social, and political transformations of the 19th and early 20th centuries
