Develop your project management skills and practice at an advanced level.

In this innovative studio format, you will be given a live brief, and through hands-on learning, you will work with others in a group project to meet this brief. Your task will centre on how interdisciplinary humanities approaches can be applied to contemporary place-based challenges.

You will address these multi-dimensional challenges through a range of approaches, applying learning from your specific topic of expertise such as:

• Artificial intelligence
• Society and global challenges
• Sustainability and environmental futures
• Global medical and health humanities

Projects may be based on academically significant topics that will expose you to areas of contemporary research. Alternatively, they may be linked to ‘real world’ issues and external clients enabling you to develop your abilities in professional practice.

This project-based module will incorporate studio sessions with lectures from a range of disciplinary experts and external stakeholders, workshops to support practical skills and student-led group working in the studio space.

In this second studio format module, you will build on your first applied learning experience. You will move from contemporary place-based challenges to a focus on how interdisciplinary humanities approaches can be applied to global challenges that encompass multiple locales and contexts.

You’ll continue to develop project management and practice at an advanced level working on a live brief. Through further hands-on learning, you will work with others in a group project to meet this brief.

These multi-dimensional challenges will be addressed through a range of approaches as you apply learning from your specific topic of expertise such as:

• Artificial intelligence
• Society and global challenges
• Sustainability and environmental futures
• Global Medical and Health Humanities

Projects may be based on academically significant topics that will expose you to areas of contemporary research. Alternatively, they may be on issues put forward by external clients, enabling you to develop your abilities in professional practice.

This project-based module will incorporate studio sessions with lectures from a range of disciplinary experts and external stakeholders, workshops to support practical skills, and student-led group working in the studio space.

In this module you’ll gain a range of practical skills that are required to lead the development and implementation of innovative solutions to global challenges within education, academia, business and society. You will participate in workshops and work in self-directed Action Learning Sets which meet independently on a regular basis outside of the classroom.

Applying a critical, decolonial lens, you will reflect on your own position, prior learning and experience and connect these with ideas of leadership (and leadership ethics) in a range of contexts.

Our focus is a humanities-led approach to leadership, grounded in critical, creative and collaborative skills. You’ll be encouraged to take a holistic approach to the role of leadership in society, and humanistic thinking.

As well as theories of leadership and followership, you will learn skills for leadership and collaboration, which may include:

• Project and self-management
• Entrepreneurship
• Research and information literacy
• Communication
• Partnership building

The teaching and learning are designed to be flexible and prioritise self-directed study, enabling you to develop your own unique set of leadership skills and traits which will prepare you for a wide range of leadership roles, further study or a range of careers.

Explore and experiment with topics, ideas and methods which you will devise and design. The project will usually be a piece of individual work and can take a number of formats, which may include:

• A long form written dissertation
• A multi-media formatted project
• A creative intervention or a policy document

You will be supported by The School of Global Affairs to work collaboratively and to identify external partnerships through which to develop the project. You’ll be expected to draw on the multi-disciplinary aspects of your programme to devise critical, creative and future facing work.

Gain a comprehensive understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) from historical, technical, cultural, ethical and practical perspectives. By the end of the course, you will have a well-rounded understanding of AI, encompassing its historical roots, current applications, societal implications and future challenges.

Teaching will consist of a mix of lectures and practice-based seminars. You will be encouraged to think about past, present and future impacts of AI and develop practical skills in their use as well as critical and ethical approaches to evaluating their impact on society.

Seminar topics may include:

• Narratives of AI - how AI is conceived of and considered in popular culture, speculative fiction and social imaginaries
• An introduction to common current tools and uses and opportunities to practically experiment with them in a hands-on way
• Contemporary and future ethical challenges and critical responses to AI e.g. bias, inequalities
• The environmental impacts of AI, and sustainability for and of AI
• Methods for exploring the situated ethics of AI-driven technologies in organisations

What ethical and political questions can we ask about ‘smart’ digital infrastructures that are typically overlooked by engineers and tech corporations? How can we approach the social connections forged by ‘smart’ digital infrastructures?

In this module, you will consider the forms of power and control underpinning algorithmic cultures and data. You will explore the progression of technology and how it has made the relationship between the digital and non-digital more complex.

You will consider how technology doesn’t always work as planned, whether it affects people differently or leads to unexpected consequences, such as:

• The messiness of datafication
• Algorithmic culture tied up with affective contagion
• Unpredictable ecosystems
• Electronic waste straddling the planet

This module explores futures literacy through specific design approaches. These approaches help anticipate and manage potential societal and environmental changes introduced by emerging technologies and systems.

All designers navigate the unknowability of the future. Artefacts they create today, may well come into use under some future conditions they may neither know nor control. In this module, you will learn how to grapple with unknowability by combining systemic and human-centred perspectives, with creative design approaches and methods such as:

• Speculative design
• Design fiction
• Forecasting
• Backcasting
• Experiential futures
• Defuturing

These approaches will empower you to concretise potential futures. This enables a variety of stakeholders to effectively consider and strategise for the wider societal and environmental challenges that new technologies and systems may bring. The module will help you develop the advanced level of critical perspectives and creative skills needed for such an endeavour, and experience how they may be applied in a variety of organisations.

Intercultural business communication plays a key role in the global economy and world commerce as it considers cultural differences between international business partners and clients. On this interdisciplinary module, you will examine how communication is affected by different values, attitudes and beliefs, in the context of volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environments.

You will learn how to effectively interact, work and develop meaningful relationships with professionals across different cultures and social groups: essential skills in a global workforce.

Drawing on interdisciplinary research,you’ll gain the necessary awareness, know-how and practical skills needed to become more effective at intercultural interactions. You will use various models to analyse your own experiences and develop a personal development plan to address effective interactions at work in the face of significant challenges. Studying intercultural business communication will foster an understanding of your own cultural, linguistic and communication related background. This may benefit future careers that operate within a multicultural context.

Study a language formally in a way that will support your learning. You can enrol either as a beginner or as a more advanced student where you will build on existing knowledge.

In the seminars and workshops, as well as through a series of optional drop-ins offered later in the module, you’ll get the tools you need to approach materials which are relevant to your own academic and work interests.

You will be given opportunities to practise in your chosen target language, building on materials posted on the learning space (flipped classroom videos, self-study links) as well as other events organised for the community of linguists and language learners in the University, such as our weekly lunch clubs.

On this module you will develop transferable communicative skills and reflect on cultural and linguistic challenges which are relevant to your postgraduate studies and beyond.

You may use these skills to research matters relating to intercultural and/or interlinguistic issues, work with archives, develop an international research network, or simply add them to your CV.