Negotiate, design and deliver a research project about a Global Religions topic of your choice in this dissertation module.

Through a project-orientated approach, the module provides the opportunity to consolidate your existing knowledge and skills base while developing new knowledge and skills.

This module will enable you to focus on a key issue in global religions with guidance from a member of staff. As such it combines lectures on key issues and guided research on a topic of your choice.

The topic you choose will relate to one of the subjects covered in the lectures and will be supervised by the colleague responsible for that lecture. This module will encourage you to develop research skills and to focus on a subject you are particularly interested in, such as gender, social ethics, violence, the state, protest, blasphemy, popular culture and conspiracy.

Explore historical and contemporary issues in religions as this module explores areas of the non-Western world such as Africa, South Asia and the Middle East.

Focusing on the public role of religion, the module considers the interaction between religion and law, culture, politics, education, health, peace, development and other issues in post-independence and earlier contexts.

Create the theoretical and analytical foundation for your future study and work in public policy. This module will give you a solid grounding in the theories of policymaking process, the critical actors and institutions involved, and the key concepts, traditions and paradigms that have shaped policymaking.

You will gain a solid grasp of the policy cycle and theories that explain the nature of policymaking including agenda setting, policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. You’ll examine a range of public policy theories and apply these approaches to real world case studies including:

• Mainstream approaches such as institutionalism, new public management and evidence-based policymaking
• Broader theoretical approaches such as multi-level governance and complexity
• Critical policy studies examined through the lens of power - drawing on a range of gender and anti-racist approaches

You will identify the actors and factors that shape policy, discover the causes of policy convergence and policy change, and assess what equitable, fair and just policies look like.

The global religious landscape has changed significantly over the last hundred years or so and this module will enable you to understand the changes that are taking place.

While the emergence of cults/new religions is not a recent phenomenon, the previous century, particularly since the 1960s, has witnessed a remarkable proliferation of new religious trajectories. Factors such as increased travel, advances in global communication and digital media have made available a variety of options for religious seekers.

Through an analysis of developments within established organisations to the emergence and spread of contemporary groups, you will be introduced to several theoretical perspectives and issues, such as violence, millennialism, gender and charismatic leadership.

Employing methods drawn from sociology and cultural studies, this module introduces students to key debates (e.g. those surrounding mysticism and drug induced altered states of consciousness) and to the use of psychoactive sacraments globally.

Not only is recreational drug use ubiquitous in modern societies, but religious history is littered with evidence of the pursuit of altered states of consciousness. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the spiritual and cultural significance of drug use has begun to attract scholarly attention over the last decade or so.

While some attention will be given to ancient drug use, the primary focus will be the modern period. Overall, this module is designed to enable postgraduate students to address a neglected, but important area in the study of religion, culture, and society. More generally, it uses the study of drugs and altered states of consciousness to address some core issues in the study of religions, such as the significance of peak experiences, religious epistemology, social constructions of the sacred and the profane and religious opposition to drug legislation.

Undertake your own focussed, self-directed study on a topic of your choice in philosophy, guided by a tutor with relevant expertise and research interests. Teaching consists of one-on-one tutorials and five contact hours, to be arranged between you and your supervisor over the term.

This module examines Muslim women’s engagement with key texts in the Islamic tradition through the conceptual frameworks of gender and hermeneutics.

Focusing on women’s experiences from the formative period (7th CE) to the present, you will explore how gendered power relations have shaped the interpretation and transmission of religious knowledge and how interpretive traditions have informed constructions of femininity, piety, and legal status.

You will investigate the reception of texts revealed in response to women’s questions or concerns and analyse how classical exegetes and jurists negotiated questions of gender after the death of the Prophet. The module will also introduce you to a range of interpretive voices—classical, modern and contemporary—with particular attention to Muslim women scholars and activists who have critiqued or reimagined inherited frameworks.

Crucially, you will use materials from the Islamic tradition not only to explore gendered dynamics within Muslim contexts, but also to critically interrogate the category of gender itself—its assumptions, constructions, and applicability across time and place. In doing so, the module offers theoretical and historical tools for understanding the interplay between gender, authority and interpretation in Muslim societies.

Whether global, national, ethnic or ethical, conflicts frequently involve religion. This module provides the knowledge and skills to help you understand and analyse why conflict happens within and between religious groups, and to assess the positive and negative contributions that religions make to wider struggles – from local disputes through to global terrorism.

Between themselves, in their relations with secular states and ideologies, and even at the level of sects or denominations, religions engage in conflict arising from deeply held beliefs and values, as well as in struggles for power, status and legitimacy.

Understanding how and why religious groups contribute to global and regional conflicts and civil wars – from terrorist attacks, through historically embedded disputes in Israel/Gaza and Northern Ireland, to Christian/Muslim violence in Nigeria, Uganda and India – is vital for development, humanitarian intervention, international relations, diplomacy and conflict resolution.

Encounter some of the most foundational religious and philosophical texts of the Hindu and Buddhists traditions in this fascinating module. Texts will vary from year to year, but may include the following from the Brahmanical/Hindu tradition:

• The Rig Veda
• Upanishads
• Mahabharata
• Bhagavad Gita
• Yoga Sutra

And the following from the Buddhist tradition:

• The Nikayas
• Vinaya
• Jatakas
• Lotus Sutra
• The Bodhicaryavatara

Through close readings, we will examine some of the core religio-philosophical ideas of early Indian thought as well as pay close attention to the composition, style and structure of the texts themselves. We will also attempt to situate Hindu and Buddhist textual material within a social and historical context, paying close attention to who participates in the religio-philosophical world of ancient India and in what types of social circumstances religio-philosophical ideas are discussed.

Alongside reading the primary sources, we will also situate our engagements within scholarly debates about approaches to interpretation such as text-historical criticism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, orientalism and post-colonial theory.

‘Globalisation’ has become a buzzword in the social sciences and lay discourse. It is often related to the speeding up of global communication and travel and the trans-nationalisation of economic, political, religious, social and legal institutions.

The meaning and causes of globalisation are highly debatable. Some say it is the logical outcome of capitalism and the development of the world market; others see it as arising from improvements in information and communication technologies with transformative implications for democracy and civil society.

For the purposes of this module, globalisation is defined as a complex and contradictory set of processes that are multi-scalar, multi-temporal, multi-centric, multi-form, and multi-causal. It produces fragmentation and integration, divergence and convergence as well as continuities and discontinuities. Their overall effect is to reconfigure asymmetries of power and knowledge and this in turn raises questions about governance on different scales both in the developed and developing parts of the world.

This module thinks about the nature of goddesses in ancient South and Southeastern Asian religious traditions in relation to issues that lie at the heart of feminism, women going against the norm, women’s autonomy and choice.

You will explore questions such as:

• What makes a goddess ‘wild’?
• What makes her ‘mild’?
• Can tales of goddesses be read as tales of womanhood?
• Can the ideas of selfhood we find in these early non-Western traditions enlarge and alter modern feminist theories?

The module may explore what constitutes transgression for women and attitudes towards transgressive women in a variety of South Asian and Southeast Asian literature: from Hindu legal literature on women’s autonomy, to narratives from Indonesia, to verses on warrior goddesses, to early Sanskrit love poetry on women seeking love and married women enticing travelling men.

Designed for students from diverse academic backgrounds, this programme equips you with a solid foundation for master's-level and advanced study in World Christianity. You'll explore key themes and major issues that are central to the field, preparing you for deeper academic engagement.

You will learn foundational skills of critical analysis and interpretation which will enable you to reflect on and engage with central concepts and current debates in the study of World Christianity. This module will give you a broad perspective on the political, social and cultural context of Christianity, and aims to provide you with in-depth knowledge of World Christianity through engaging with various source materials.

You will gain an understanding of the complex ways in which Christianity is experienced in the world today and the impact it has on the peoples who inhabit different geographical areas. At the end of the module, you will have acquired a substantive knowledge of the multifaceted political, economic and social realities that shapes lives of Christians, particularly the context of religious and social diversity. You will also engage with questions about the lived experience of Christian communities around the world especially in the context of the complex socio-economic forces.