Global Sustainable Development BA

This module provides you with a core grounding in the key historical and contemporary debates encompassing both classical and alternative approaches to international/global development. During this module you will be able to develop an understanding of key theories and ideas which have shaped the evolution of global development as a field of scholarship and practice. Through this understanding you will learn to critically debate different schools of development thinking and the evolving history of the field, from colonialism through to efforts to 'decolonise' the field. You will consider a range of policy approaches and how these have evolved in relation to changing global priorities and debates, including the shift from a discourse of 'international' to 'global' development as well as the implications of the widespread cuts in international development assistance from the mid 2020s. 

This module aims to introduce you to the concept of development and key debates over its definition and scope. It also aims to build your understanding of the historical evolution of the idea of development and of associated spheres of policy and practice. It will support you to develop your capacities to critically engage with academic literature on development from a range of different perspectives and disciplines, as well as foster your abilities to draw links between development debates and the questions of sustainability and global political economy raised in other L1 core modules.

Through this module, you will develop an understanding of the complexities and intersectionalities at play within global sustainable development as a field of study and practice, alongside a range of key transferable, academic and research skills. These skills underpin the ability to think and work in interdisciplinary ways, to question the power behind knowledge(s) and develop critical reasoning skills. Through lectures, workshops and small group tutorials you will develop skills in finding, presenting, analysing and critically evaluating complex information, key qualitative and quantitative research methods. 

This module aims to introduce you to a range of core skills and methods used in global sustainable development research and practice. Through this, it provides key training in finding, evaluating, analysing and presenting data and information. It also aims to help you to develop your skills in self-reflection and an awareness of positionality, ethics, power and social relations inherent to global sustainable development. It also provides you with an opportunity to develop your skills and understanding of the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to framing and tackling key global sustainable development issues.

The complex nature of global challenges illuminates the intricate connections between social justice and environmental change, revealing how these forces shape our world. This module goes beyond identifying problems, delving into how different stakeholders are actively developing solutions and driving positive transformation. The wider impact of our research varies from the local to the global, with benefits to the economy, society, culture, policy, health, the environment and quality of life. From revitalizing local communities to reducing risk to life, you will gain insights into how research can help shape more sustainable and equitable futures. This module takes a  case study approach to explore different opportunities aimed at addressing complex global challenges across research and practice.

This module will introduce you to a wide range of critical environmental issues facing the world today from physical science and social science perspectives. Drawing on a range of examples, you will critically explore the physical causes, consequences, management and solutions to environmental issues and learn how to question assumptions about environmental processes.

Through this module, you will take some of the key methodological learnings from your first term and explore how to apply these in practice, particularly through a fieldwork experience. An emphasis on reflexivity and positionality will support you to reflect not just on how to use skills, but also the ethical dilemmas and tensions of 'development on the ground'. 

This module aims to support you to employ a range of core skills and methods used in global sustainable development research and practice. It will also help you to develop your skills in self-reflection and an awareness of positionality, ethics, power and social relations inherent to global sustainable development. It will enable you to explore how development challenges manifest across global North and South contexts.

This module provides an introduction to key principles, relations and processes that contribute to a diverse array of social, cultural, economic and environmental aspects of human geography.  You will have the opportunity to learn about spatial patterns of power, inequality and interdependence produced by economic and cultural globalisation; how we experience these at the local scale; and how they have changed over time.  Through lectures and seminars you will be guided through key concepts and current debates shaping how human geographers approach these issues, illustrated by drawing on examples from around the world and at a variety of geographical scales.  It highlights the value of a geographical perspective on the world we live in.

This module introduces the general principles of physical geography. You will be able to develop a holistic understanding of how the Earth functions as a system across a range of spatial scales, focusing in particular on the functioning of key elements of this system - notably the operation of the geosphere, atmosphere, and cryosphere - and how these elements interact to influence the evolution of the system as a whole. Your assessment for this module will develop your skills in communicating and explaining complex scientific concepts.

This module aims to: - Introduce landscape and environmental planning as a means of intervening in landscape at the large scale. - Provide an understanding of landscape formation, change and the drivers of change. - Introduce the toolkit available to landscape planners. - Introduce the theory and technique of Landscape Character Assessment. - Develop report writing skills and visual literacy. - Introduce students to GIS. By the end of the module, students will be able to demonstrate understanding of/proficiency in: - The influences and processes that shape landscape. - The relationship between landscape planning and landscape policy. - Sourcing and interpreting landscape information. - Appreciating the (sometimes controversial) nature of landscape change. - Landscape Character and Landscape Character Assessment at an introductory level. Communicating landscape data and analysis at a planning scale in a critical imaginative and creative manner.

Global political economy (GPE) is a field of study that investigates the interaction between political and economic forces in contemporary and historical capitalism. You will consider key mainstream and critical theories.

You will be introduced to major processes of trade, production and exploitation, sketching the power relations of the global economy by using examples of contemporary production in different industries. You will also consider how the political economy of race, class and gender have structured the global economy through histories of colonisation and decolonisation, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first century.

In this module, you will explore the economic history of Britain and the global economy, focusing on the forces that shaped economic growth and development. You'll examine modern theories of growth and development in the context of historical events, addressing current debates on poverty, inequality, and North-South relations. The module will help you understand the differences between historical methodologies and abstract economic methods, while also providing you with the tools to assess the effectiveness of policies and institutions in fostering growth and reducing poverty. You will work with both quantitative and qualitative historical sources to develop a deeper understanding of economic development and the factors that drive or hinder growth.

Ensuring the realisation of global sustainable development requires delivering policies and practices to achieve social and environmental justice. These policies must be underpinned by reliable, robust and ethical research. This module supports you in developing understanding and skills to design, conduct, analyse and present findings from research while being attentive to ethical, moral and logistical concerns. Beginning with understanding the philosophical background to and processes involved in designing research for global sustainable development, the module provides training in key quantitative and qualitative methods (including creative and participatory methods) as well as detailed engagement with the moral, ethical and practical complexities of delivering research. This module is delivered through lectures, small group teaching and practical activities.  

This module aims to equip you with the knowledge and skills to design conduct and present findings from research; develop your ethical competencies and awareness in conducting research for global sustainable development; and provide you with a methods tool kit, and understanding of the appropriateness of these methods for conducting different research activities

Development is sometimes conceptualised as a process, but is also associated with a range of concrete interventions by governments, international donors, NGOs and other actors, which are aimed at stimulating particular kinds of economic and societal change. This module focuses on the forms of intervention, policy and advocacy through which actors and institutions seek to generate change in relation to GSD. You will explore debates on the principles guiding development interventions, such as the influence of expert, practice-based, activist and other types of knowledge, the role and value of foreign aid, the policy-making process at different scales, and the processes of organizing and advocacy to promote particular GSD agendas. This will include a focus on the processes associated with GSD practice  at international, national and local levels. You will also be introduced to the range of key institutions and actors in GSD associated with different kinds of development and sustainability interventions. To unpack GSD practice and advocacy, emphasis will be put on core urban, social, economic, and environmental challenges and how these are addressed in practice. 

The module aims to introduce you to a range of key development actors involved in designing and implementing development interventions; and engage you in analysis and reflection of different strategies and approaches to engineering change in a global sustainable development context. Through this, it also aims to help you to understand different theoretically-informed approaches to practice as well as to policy-making and advocacy processes at local, national and global scales; and foster your self-reflexivity in relation to global sustainable development.

During this module you will gain substantive knowledge and critical understanding of researching global sustainable development through field class-based hands-on research activities, and support to design a viable proposal for research. Working collaboratively with external partners and with intensive support and guidance from academic staff you will develop skills in research design and implementation, while exploring the everyday realities and ethics of global sustainable development policies and practices.

This module aims to provide you with substantive knowledge, understanding and skills in researching global sustainable development. It also aims to enhance your transferable, research, communication and employability skills through in-depth, high-quality field research practice, as well as provide you with a structured and supported experience in addressing the ethical complexities of global sustainable development as a field of research and practice.

Environmental issues continue to be a key area of contemporary public concern and current political debate. They raise fundamental questions about the relationship between society and environment, and the politics and equity of that relationship. This module provides a geographical introduction to these issues and debates with examples from a range of scales, from the global to the local. You will be able to learn and understand core ideas, further developing understanding through inter-related explorations covering debates focused on  different real world themes and their potential solutions.

This research-led module introduces you to the cutting edge of Social and Cultural Geography. The module illustrates the diversity and vitality of contemporary social and cultural geography including some of the philosophical concepts and theoretical debates that have shaped the subject.  The module aims to deepen and enrich the ways in which you are able to think about geographical issues. It does this through helping you to develop a critical understanding of concepts and approaches that underpin the substance and methods of contemporary human geography. The module team works with you to help you to develop your own 'photo essays'  - which bring the ideas of the module to your experiences from everyday life.

Development in the Global South is a major issue of international concern in the 21st century. This module guides you to explore contemporary development issues and examine the contribution that geographers, and geographical thought, can make towards understanding inequality, poverty and socio-economic change. Definitions of 'development', 'poverty' and 'the poor' shift and are invested with political meaning which reflect specific geographies and ways of seeing the world: you will be able to develop critical understandings of such terminology and the power dynamics implicit within them. This module addresses diverse theories, paradigms and contemporary critiques of development, and explores some of the central issues affecting processes of development. Case examples are drawn from Latin America, Africa and South-East Asia.

This module will present you with a 'sociological perspective on social policy' to provide a macro perspective on contemporary social and economic transformations in the UK and globally. Particular emphasis will be placed on the challenges posed for social policy theory and practice, as well as the potential to imagine alternative social policy scenarios.

Some of the issues you will consider include: globalisation, neoliberalism, falling fertility and ageing societies, precarious labour markets and migration, and mobility. You will be encouraged to take a comparative and international/global perspective, emphasising not only the perspectives of International Organisations, but also the challenges faced by other types of welfare regimes. 

The module will equip you with a deep understanding of key socio economic challenges faced by postindustrial societies while also reflecting on how these challenges are received and responded to by Global South countries. You will also develop your skills in policy report writing, an essential tool most will use in their professional careers.

This module introduces dual honours economics students to Statistics and Econometrics and in particular how they are used in economics, to investigate economic relationships and to test economic theories. The first part of the module describes the key statistical ideas and methods that economics students need to know, and provides opportunities to practise their use. The second part of the module focusses on econometrics, providing students with the knowledge of how to model economic data, again with opportunities to develop practical experience in this area.

In order to understand global climate change, one first has to understand how the climate system works. This module will give students a strong understanding of the global climate system, focusing on the atmospheres, the oceans, and their interaction. The first part of the module will consider the main characteristics of, and processes behind, climate from the global to the local scale. The second part of the module will examine the physical characteristics of the oceans and their geographical variation, and the role of the oceans in the climate system.

At the heart of every discipline lie the ideas, concepts and frameworks that help its students and researchers to make sense of its object of study. In planning, geography and urban studies there are numerous perspectives, concepts and key thinkers that have shaped the development of these disciplines. This module introduces you to a series of key concepts and thinkers and helps you to make sense of urban life as a result.

This module supports you to develop your imaginative engagement with the nature of urban life and human settlement. Urban theory refers to writing and thinking devoted to 'seeing' and understanding urban life. Concepts and ideas are critical to how we engage with the key features and problems of the urban world, shape the process of conducting research and help us to make sense of and understand many of the key challenges in cities today. Theory is therefore critical to our understanding of how cities work in practice and how we understand and view urban life subsequently informs the development of cities and efforts to make them more socially just, sustainable and better places to live. You are introduced to a range of ideas and key concepts in urban studies with a view to understanding how cities have developed and how they 'work' in broad terms. The module considers a range of thinkers, concepts and perspectives. 

The module aims to introduce and extend your knowledge of different ways of seeing city life. This includes a wide range of perspectives, thinkers and concepts relating to urban social and political life, the economies of cities, the range of communities and groups living in cities and their built and natural environments. It also aims to provide you with an armoury of critical ideas and concepts that will deepen your understanding of the fundamental power relations, inequalities and divisions that characterise cities and which structure localities, particularly in relation to questions of class, race and gender.

Migration has been receiving more attention in international politics. This module analyses migration using a world politics lens. It will provide students with the concepts and theories - as well as the historical, contextual and critical skills - needed to understand international migration from different perspectives. It will discuss migration and problematise migration concepts and categories such as forced migration (asylum and internal people displacement), statelessness and citizenship, border control/security, labour migration, migration diplomacy, family migration and environmental migration. It will also approach case studies including the Migration and Asylum Policy of the European Union, migration politics in Latin America and the USA-Mexico border among others.

This module explores the relationship between landscape,planning, policy and governance at different scales and in different contexts. This ranges from international decision-making frameworks down to individual sites in different contexts. Students will learn about the impact of policy and ideas on landscape and vice versa, and explore the role of landscape planning tools, techniques and methodologies within the wider planning framework. The module will examine how decisions about landscape are made and the effects they have from the strategic to the site scale.

Urban violence, insecurity and crime are features of the everyday and crisis moments of city life in many nations around the world. Warfare touches life in many cities today, questions of narco-terror and violence affect many others. Meanwhile, the role of the climate emergency in driving migration and instability, forms of economic crisis and precarity, alongside other forms of disturbance lead to forms of injustice, violence and victimisation. This module seeks to develop your understanding of the political, economic and social drivers of human insecurity in urban settings.

This module has been designed to help you to develop your engagement with and responses to multiple forms of urban insecurity. It discusses the diverse kinds of responses to insecurity by states, armies, police and citizens, many of which bring further rounds of insecurity and violence to marginalised and excluded populations. 

The primary aim of the module is to find answers to the question: how can peace and security be enjoyed by all citizens in cities around the world today? You will be introduced  to a range of examples of violence, conflict and insecurity in urban contexts around the world. Through this, you will be supported to develop your awareness of the programmes and policies being pursued to make better and safer places. Examples of urban violence and crime, policing, forced evictions, domestic violence, terrorism, gangs and the rise of gated communities and other modes of design and control to produce securitised urban spaces are discussed and analysed in their effectiveness.

The module aims to develop your awareness of the political, social and economic context in which urban violence and insecurity are embedded in different global contexts. It also aims to develop your understanding of core debates relating to urban insecurity in both the global North and South. In addition, it seeks to develop your critical understanding of the role of these debates in informing policies and initiatives to try and reduce violence and insecurity in cities.

Trigger warning - this module will bring you into contact with discussions of extreme violence, gender-based violence, sexual violence, police and state violence, including terrorism.

During this module you will be able to prepare and carry out your own research project on a topic relating to global sustainable development. Under the supervision of a staff member, you will develop your competencies to produce a research report in the style and length of an academic journal article. This work will be based upon your own primary data collection and/or analysis of existing secondary datasets. 

The module aims to give you the experience of carrying out an original research project under expert supervision, and enable you to put into practice the skills of research methods, ethics, data analysis and communication skills acquired in the first and second years of your degree programme.

To effectively work towards the realisation of global sustainable development, it is vital to have a key toolkit of professional skills. This module provides key training in a variety of employability-related skills that will equip you to work in various sectors including the public, policy, private and charitable realms. Through the module you will develop specific professional skills, as well as the ability to reflect upon and develop your own skills and practice, and apply analytical tools and critical thinking skills to a professional practice scenario. 

This module aims to equip you with the knowledge and skills required to work in a range of professional settings linked to global sustainable development, as well as develop your skills and competencies with regards to both employability and self-reflection and self-development. It also aims to develop your critical awareness of professional practice in relation to global sustainable development, including ethical challenges, while developing your skills in responding to and delivering on common professional demands, such as competitive tenders and/or consultancies.

This module works with critical debates and approaches in Environmental Geographies to help understand a range of environmental crises (such as climate change, sustainability, waste and pollution, biodiversity loss/conservation, extinction) in front of us. You will be able to examine histories, causes and solutions for these environmental crises while drawing connections between global South and North.  The module will cover a range of scales and actors from individual behaviours to community actions, and you will be able to examine the work of local bodies and global organisations and negotiations.The module will leverage conceptual and political tools provided by environmental geographies to ask how we could tackle these multiple and co-constituted crises in socially just ways.

This module examines Indigenous and Black geographies through storytelling and film as a way to understand the need to decolonise geography. You will get to examine how race, racism, Indigenous rights, settler colonialism, settler responsibility, white supremacy, land rights, dispossession and genocide shape geographies of place, space and landscape, as well as more affirmative visions of Indigenous futures. Topics covered typically include geographies of identity, emotions, memory, racism, colonialism, gender, landscape, and visual representation. The aim of this module is to centre Indigenous and Black narratives, voices and knowledge to understand geography differently while simultaneously critiquing the current whiteness of academic geographical discourse. Trigger warning - this module engages with potentially distressing and challenging themes of rape, murder, abuse, loss and violence.

During this module, you will gain deeper insight into how we study protests and movements and their impact on social change. 

The content will take a historical overview, tracing the development of theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of social movements, matched with historical and contemporary case studies of movement from around the world. 

By focusing on what functions movements play in society, as well as how they have been studied, you will become equipped with the tools to both analyse movements, and engage with sociological debates surrounding larger questions of inequality, identity, democracy and social justice.

This module will cover the economic theories used for the analysis of inequality and poverty.
The theories will be backed by evidence from both the developed and the developing countries. The module starts off by a discussion of issues around measurement of inequality and poverty; the different measures that are used and the inherent assumptions behind these measures. We then move on to explain the existing global trends in inequality and poverty. Different theories are used to explain these trends; for example: role of human capital, poverty traps etc. Finally we discuss the policy response of different countries to address the issues of inequality and poverty, drawing on the specific examples of welfare programmes in the developed countries and the conditional cash transfers in the developing countries.

Place, in all its forms, has long inspired creativity, while the creative works that result are themselves inherently spatial.  This module explores creative work from several historical and contemporary creative movements and associated cultural producers in context.  Why did their creative work arise where it did?  What difference did that place (or places) make to their aesthetic thought and expression?  How was space itself integral to their creative work?  In this module you are guided through the intricate relationship between art across various media, geography, and the political.  Emphasis is put on specific types of space and place as sites and mediums of aesthetic thought and creative practice.  Core themes will typically include identity, place and displacement, historical imaginations and the built environment, and creativity and socio-spatial transformation.

This module explores how a geographical approach helps us to analyse issues such as controversial election results, divisive immigration policies, and contentious social activism. You will be able to learn how the two key concepts of democracy and citizenship can be used to engage with contemporary debates and theories to draw out the links between geography, policy and society, and the ways in which these are shaped and responded to by citizens, communities, civil society, and political parties. The module emphasises the critical appraisal and interpretation of a variety of perspectives - including our own. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which these interactions are played out across and through multiple scales, from the global to our everyday lives.

Climate change and global warming are accelerating at unprecedented rates.  This affects different aspects of human lives, livelihoods, and the built and natural environment, posing significant challenges to global sustainable development.   In this research-led module, you will gain understanding of how climate change is not just manifesting through rising temperatures, but also how it is changing global circulations in complex ways with far-reaching impacts. You will explore important themes, such as:- Fundamentals of the changing climate including the Earth's energy balance, causes of climate change and the greenhouse effect.-  how the global circulation works to form the climate as we experience on earth.- how climate change has changed, and is projected to change these important circulations and the impacts on regional climate over key geographical regions.

This module will provide you with the opportunity to develop a strong understanding of current and likely future global and regional changes to the climate system.  You will also be introduced to the tools and data used by scientists to understand and project these changes.

During this module, you will critically examine the politics of liberal war,  a term used to describe the various military activities of the liberal powers since the end of the Cold War, from military interventions in Kosovo to the invasions occupations, counter insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq, to the training and arming of Ukraine's military. Liberal war is grounded in ethical claims and logics that emphasise war as a humanitarian measure to liberate the oppressed and to achieve or preserve ideals of the international liberal order, such as democracy and freedom. War pursued by the liberal powers is therefore seen to be a mechanism of liberal peace and justice.  

You will study the role of liberal war within global racial hierarchies and the ongoing condition of coloniality, the relationship between liberal war and gender, different conceptualizations and ways of understanding the violences of liberal war, the relationships between liberal war and liberal economy, and the politics of death in liberal war. You will also examine the presents and the futures of liberal war, considering events such as the fall of Kabul and the war in Ukraine. 

By the end of the module, you will have critically assessed liberal war's logics and ethical claims and the practices that go along with them.

Infrastructure is a core component of cities, enabling economic, social and environmental elements of urban life to circulate and be drawn together or separated. In this module, you will learn about the importance of infrastructure to cities. The focus will be global, with an emphasis on understanding the politics of infrastructure development, how infrastructure projects can exacerbate or address inequalities, and the role of planners in envisioning, delivering and managing infrastructure. The module will start with a wide definition of infrastructures, which will include physical transport, energy, and water networks, but also focus on social and more localised infrastructures and their impacts on urban communities. 

The module will enable you to critically appraise technical approaches to infrastructure as well as developing knowledge of their social bases and cultural meanings. Through the module you will be able to develop knowledge of the ways in which planning deals with infrastructure and examine alternative means of conceiving and delivering infrastructure through planning policies and decisions.

Through a series of case studies, you will have opportunities to engage with a range of infrastructure projects and programmes enabling you to understand how they came about, the underlying planning processes that shaped them, their outcomes and who wins and loses from them.

The aim of this module is to critically examine the development process within a global context, drawing on examples from developed and developing nations, to understand the local global nexus. You will be able to learn about the different ways in which 'sustainable development' is defined, and how we can decolonise development reflecting more critically on our position, and the power relations within this process.  Drawing on debates within development geography, and other disciplines, the module is structured around two themes: current global crises and how these affect us all but differently across the globe; and development interventions which aim to tackle global crises globally and locally.  Topics covered may include: neoliberalism and its relation to the financial crises, the environmental crises and its root causes, populism and the rise of inequalities, sustainable development and the sustainable development goals, alternatives to development, the pros and cons of the use of technology.