This module explores the practical challenges of designing and conducting research. It provides a process focused overview of the stages of a research project from reviewing literature, defining research questions, and identifying appropriate methods of quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, to navigating ethics, writing up and presenting the research, and data management. The teaching of these elements is underpinned by a strong emphasis on professional practice, practical research skills and critical reflection. The module is assessed via a research proposal that provides important foundations for conducting an empirical PGT dissertation in SSPC. The skills covered on this module are a key part of professional research practice and as such are important transferable skills, valued by employers in a variety of sectors and industries as well as in academic career paths.
From the aftermath of the English Civil War in the seventeenth century to the cultural legacies of the nineteenth century, the literature of the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is marked by intense negotiations between desire and decay. The drive for improvement, pleasure and reform, is mirrored by a fear of excess, decline, and disorder. This module explores how writers responded to periods of social transformation, imperial expansion, scientific change, and political upheaval by imagining new forms of intimacy, morality, identity, and aesthetic value. Themes to be explored are likely to include both dramatic moments of historical change and the slower, often contested, reworking of social and natural orders. We may explore: • the education debate, sensibility, and new forms of desire in the novel; • the expansion of print culture and the professionalisation of literature; • growing interest in the marginal, the transgressive, and the non-canonical • the challenges posed by the Romantic and Victorian periods to Enlightenment ideals of reason and progress.
This module aims to introduce the student to the main deterministic techniques that are used in operational research, namely linear and integer programming, dynamic programming, machine scheduling, project networks, and heuristics. The process of modelling problems of a practical nature as a linear or integer program will be developed. Following an explanation of a standard version of the simplex method, some of its variants will be introduced. The main ideas of linear programming duality will also be explained. A computer workshop session trains students in the use of commercial linear programming software. The branch and bound approach for solving integer programming problems will also be developed. Dynamic programming will be introduced as a technique for tackling problems in which decisions can be made sequentially. For machine scheduling, the main focus will be to introduce the main problem types, and develop solution procedures for selected models. For project networks, the representation of projects as networks and methods for analysing such networks will be covered. Following a discussion of the reasons for using heuristic methods for complex problems, a discussion of the properties of good heuristics will be given. Some of the design principles for heuristics will be explained, and local search heuristics will be discussed. One of the pre-requisites for MATH6158
This module aims to introduce the student to some of the main deterministic techniques that are used in operational research, namely linear and integer programming. The process of modelling problems of a practical nature as a linear or integer program will be developed. Following an explanation of a standard version of the simplex method, some of its variants will be introduced. The main ideas of linear programming duality will also be explained. A computer workshop session trains students in the use of commercial linear programming software. The branch and bound approach for solving integer programming problems will also be developed.
This module builds on your knowledge of language teaching methodologies developed in LING6022. It will focus on current issues in language teaching methodologies and address more specialised areas taking both a synchronic and diachronic which will complement those explored in LING 6022. It will address the implementation and adaptation of methodologies, with particular emphasis on developing your knowledge of the theoretical framework for CLT. You will build on translating theoretical approaches to language learning into practical activities through practical innovation and observation of lesson videos. We will focus on the learner (including learning processes), the classroom environment and practical implementations of language teaching.
This module is suitable for students working in clinical and health research settings who wish to develop their research skills. Students will be expected to conduct an empirical research task. The module forms a basis for other research modules comprising the MRes programme. Learning is shared with the Doctoral training programme. Students from other programmes or requesting this for CPD will need agreement from the MRes Programme Lead. MRes students will be given priority if places are limited.
The module will reflect on who or what constitutions the "South" in internal relationships, to take a deep and critical look at the contested nature of development and to evaluate the development achievement, and to study in depth the mainstream economic development ideology from the early 1980s to the present, focusing on the Washington and pot-Washington consensus and associated ideas of global economic integration.
This module will examine the main points of contention regarding the South, its position in the international economy and changes that have occurred over the last few decades. Students will be asked to critically evaluate the reasons for the economic stasis that has occurred in some regions and the economic changes that have occurred in other regions. The objectives of the course are to understand how less developed countries have been, and are being integrated into the world system, to consider how the nature of the world system influences the form of integration, and to discuss alternative forms of integration that lead to more favourable developmental outcomes for LDC’s.
The module will introduce students to the economics of development.
This module will develop your understanding and knowledge of development across childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. We will present historical and current research studies and explain how these link to related theoretical frameworks. The module will explore basic issues in the study of development including social and emotional development, language and cognition. For each area of development, we will explore key changes in development including infancy, preschool, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. The main areas of development we explore include; (i) birth and early infancy (e.g., early perception and learning, early experiences); (ii) social-emotional development (e.g., development of emotion recognition and expression, understanding and regulation of emotion, development in the context of relationships with parents and peers); and (iii) cognitive development (development of perception, language, cognition, developing minds, intelligence). For this module it is recommended that you have prior knowledge in Psychology, which could be through successful completion of one or more from PSYC1016, PSYC1017 or PSYC1018. Pre-requisite for PSYC3053, PSYC3057, PSYC3069
This module will develop your understanding and knowledge of development across childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. We will present historical and current research studies and explain how these link to related theoretical frameworks. The module will explore basic issues in the study of development including social and emotional development, language and cognition. For each area of development, we will explore key changes in development including infancy, preschool, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. The main areas of development we explore include; (i) birth and early infancy (e.g., early perception and learning, early experiences); (ii) social-emotional development (e.g., development in the context of relationships with parents and peers, including the role of parenting practices and family dynamics); and (iii) cognitive development (development of perception, language, cognition, developing minds, intelligence). For this module it is recommended that you have prior knowledge in Psychology, which could be through successful completion of one or more from PSYC1016, PSYC1017 or PSYC1018. Pre-requisite for PSYC3053, PSYC3057, PSYC3069
Developmental psychopathology is the study of the developmental processes that lead to psychopathology or impairment in everyday function. As a discipline, it is concerned with the different disorders which have their origins in infancy, childhood or adolescence.
Students will have completed the History Taking and Physical Assessment module which considers health assessment from a broad multi-professional viewpoint, focusing on discrimination between ‘normal’ vs ‘abnormal’ findings. This module will focus more specifically on variants from the normal (the pathophysiological) and explore the concept of clinical diagnosis. A variety of learning methods will bring students into contact with active clinicians, and with researchers who are engaged in constructing diagnostic tools. The module is based on the hypothesis that a critical understanding of both quantitative and qualitative aspects of clinical reasoning and decision making underpins diagnostic accuracy and skill.
This module will aim to increase your knowledge and understanding of the processes involved in diagnostic reasoning and clinical decision making ensuring that the neonate and their family are at the centre of care.
Deep learning and differentiable programming has revolutionised numerous fields in recent years. We've witnessed improvements in everything from computer vision through speech analysis to natural language processing as a result of the advent of cheap GPGPU compute coupled with large datasets and some neat algorithms. This module will look at how deep learning works, from the theoretical foundations of the concepts of differentiable programming right through to practical implementation.
The module will begin by looking at differential manifolds and the differential calculus of maps between manifolds. Manifolds are an abstraction of the idea of a smooth surface in Euclidean space. The module will then look at calculus on manifolds including the study of vector fields, tensor fields and the Lie derivative. The module will then go on to study Riemannian geometry in general by showing how the metric may be used to define geodesics and parallel transport, which in turn may be used to define the curvature of a Riemannian manifold. As another major application the module will investigate groups, such as the rotation group SO(3), which also have the structure of a manifold. Such objects are called Lie groups and play an important role in both theory and application of geometry. As an example of this we look at the symmetries of Riemannian manifolds. The isometries of a Riemannian metric form a group and the corresponding infinitesimal isometries form a Lie algebra. Another class of examples will be provided by matrix groups.
