This class introduces you to the core principles, skills and sources in History. You will learn about key debates and controversies through historical case studies, including immigration, nationalism, terrorism, institutional care, vaccination, childhood and diplomacy. Through examining these case studies you develop critical analysis and communication skills. The class entails one lecture and one tutorial each week, which will involve the examination of select sources, as well as a discussion of that week's topic.

You will learn about important transformations in the British economy, society, culture and politics over more than three centuries. You will explore how Britain and British people have impacted cultures and societies across the globe, and how these interactions shaped British society. As in semester 1, this class entails one lecture and one tutorial each week, which will involve the examination of select sources, as well as a discussion of that week's topic

The purpose of this class is to provide you with a balanced introduction to economics which will be at once self-contained and lay the foundation for further study in economics and more generally. The work of the class will be based on a programme of systematic directed reading, supplemented by tutorials, using group projects and in-class short answer tests as cumulative assessment.

This class provides an introduction to Glasgow’s history, culture and identity from its origins to the present day. An interdisciplinary and international perspective will adopted throughout the course and Glasgow will serve as a lens through which students will be exposed to the various factors (politics, religion, geography, immigration, health, culture, science and technology) that impact upon a place and how it is perceived by the world.

This class provides a broad introduction to the historical relationship between diseases and human societies in the early modern and modern periods. It examines the core thesis that diseases and other health conditions have had dramatic impacts on history, shaping economic relations, political and social structures and cultural and religious beliefs. However, it also explores the reverse of this, the thesis that human activities, ideas and behaviours have radically altered the diseases and conditions that afflict our societies over the last five hundred years. The course is grouped around three themes, infectious disease, chronic disease, and society's responses to disease.

This class examines the relationship between war and society over the past 100 years, particularly the everyday experience, memory and representation of modern conflict. Focusing predominantly on the two World Wars, but also looking at more recent conflicts such as the Cold War, Vietnam and the Gulf Wars, the class is informed by national and transnational perspectives and adopts a range of historical approaches, including military history, social and cultural history, gender history, life history and the history of trauma. Drawing on a variety of sources, including official reports, propaganda, films, images and personal testimonies, we will examine how war has been studied in political, social, legal, economic, ethical and cultural terms.

This class examines the International History of Europe from 1914 to 2022, a period marked by:

• world wars
• revolutions
• Cold War rivalry
• decolonisation
• the beginnings of European integration
• Brexit
• Russian invasion of Ukraine

From the legacies of empire to the global consequences of European wars, students will examine how Europe has influenced, and been influenced by, the international order. 

This is the core Microeconomics class in Year 2. It aims to develop your understanding of: the concepts of consumer choice; the motives of the firm and profit maximisation; the market and its role in achieving equilibrium prices and quantities; and the implications of market power. It introduces you to mathematical techniques commonplace in Economics, giving you the ability to apply these in a wider economic context.   

The class builds upon the macroeconomic foundations established in the first year Economics class and both extends and deepens analysis. This class will develop your ability to use key macroeconomic models and will also provide an introduction to the analysis of economic data. 

This module examines the maritime dimensions of the Atlantic world in the early modern period, moving away from the dominant landed view of empire to delve into the seascapes that underpinned and shaped the development of Atlantic empires and the modern world more generally. Focusing on maritime activities and possessions throughout the Atlantic Ocean, including Europe, West Africa, and the Americas, you will investigate how the ocean was more than a passive highway for the movement of diverse goods, peoples, and ideas but was also as an active force in that history, which shaped where, when, and how such movement occurred. 

This module examines the political, ideological, military, intelligence and cultural rivalries that defined the Cold War, with particular emphasis on their enduring significance for understanding the contemporary international order. This module moves beyond traditional bipolar interpretations centred on the United States and the Soviet Union, and instead critically assess the agency of European powers within the Cold War system.

This is a social history class on everyday life and the Troubles in the north of Ireland. Much of the historiography of the war in Northern Ireland (NI) has focused on the dynamics of the conflict and on the political manoeuvring that orbited those dynamics. This module takes a different tack to consider everyday life during the Troubles, and in particular the way in which people from the north of Ireland intervened in everyday life in both mundane and spectacular ways.

Drawing on various case studies (housing protests and the emergence of social housing; the feminist movement; the punk scene; gay and lesbian activism; prisons and imprisonment), you will engage with oral histories, documentaries, novels and other primary sources to consider how these movements emerged from and related to the war. In doing so, you will become aware of the global dimensions of a conflict sometimes misunderstood as atavistic or anachronistic, the connections between Irish and British social history, and the issues around 'dealing with the past' in contemporary NI.

The study of war has, until recently, tended to focus upon leaders, combatants and military strategies. This module, however, will analyse the experience of civilians on the Home Front, using World War Two Britain as a case study. An exploration of the cultural representations of non-combatant roles in war will be central to this module and we will engage with the historical debate about the relationship between war and social change. It will take a thematic approach and aims to make you familiar with both events and themes in the history of the Home Front.

This class examines the institution of slavery in different historical periods and in different regions of the world. Beginning with definitions of slavery, the class will examine slave-holding in ancient Greece and Rome, Asian and African forms of slavery, the Atlantic slave trade and the development of slave-based economies and societies in the New World. Among the themes to be considered will be the status of slaves and slaveholders in different societies; the economic significance of slavery and slave trading; the demography of slavery; issues of race, religion, gender and slavery; the survival of slave cultures; slave rebellion; the role of female slaves; the meaning of freedom in slave-holding societies; pro- and anti-slavery opinion and abolition.  There will be opportunities for comparison with other systems of bondage, such as serfdom and indentured servitude.

This class offers third year students the opportunity to spend eight weeks on a placement of their choice where their wider historical knowledge and set of skills can be applied; placements can range from museums, libraries, archives, historical associations to schools, charities, community organisations, healthcare providers, local authorities. This module aims to provide you with an insight into the day-to-day workings of an organisation, in order to develop history-specific vocational skills and promote reflection on employability as well as the issues involved in disseminating history outside academia. 

This class is compulsory for students who want to study history at Honours level.

It introduces you to the methods used by historians to reconstruct the past, exploring and analysing the techniques used by historians in doing primary research. The class is designed to demonstrate how you can use these techniques in your own work, particularly your 4th year/Honours dissertation. The class will introduce you to the subject of historiography – the history of history – and the ways in which our understanding and construction of history has evolved. The class is designed to promote independent learning and encourage you to reflect more deeply on the subject matter.

This class explores how mental illness has been explained, treated and experienced, from ancient times to the present, particularly in western cultures. Mental illness has been and continues to be one of the most controversial areas of health and medicine and one of the goals of this module is to examine why this has been the case. You will investigate not only how thinking about mental illness has changed over time, but also the many cultural, economic. technological and political factors that have influenced notions about mental health and psychiatry. You will engage with, and think critically about, primary sources ranging from popular literature and film to newspaper articles and medical studies.

Who are the Irish diaspora? This class explores the history of the Irish diaspora and the relationships between migrants and the homeland. It examines the history of Irish people in a variety of locations, including Scotland, England, the United States, Argentina and Australasia, and also investigates how emigrants shaped the history of Ireland itself. We focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and examine themes of political activism, labour, religion, gender, ethnicity, race and discrimination. We will also examine the relationship of the Irish diaspora to major events of modern Irish history: the Great Famine and the Irish Revolution. 

The Russia Revolution of 1917 was a seminal event in the history of the Twentieth Century and it changed the world. This module introduces you to major debates in the history of the Russian Revolution, especially through the eyes of those who either participated in revolutionary events or were affected by it. In particular, the course aims to combine discussion of key interpretive texts with an analysis of eye-witness accounts, memoirs, as well as rich cultural production-poems, art, and literature - which was inspired by the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Arranged chronologically, ‘The Russian Revolution’ covers the Bolshevik victory in 1917, the Russian Civil War, and investigates the first ten years of Bolshevik rule.

This class examines the social history of drugs and medicines in modern societies, looking at why access to powerful medicines has been restricted, the reasons that useful medical innovations have often been rejected, and the social and cultural change driven by the introduction of new products and substances. The module is taught through weekly lectures and seminars.

The class provides a broad survey of Scottish social history since 1914. The aim of this class is to explore the nature and development of Scottish society in the twentieth century by assessing the impact of industrialisation and the problems associated with de-industrialisation, as well as the development of an urban society. By the end, you should have expanded your knowledge of contemporary Scottish history and have a good idea of the diversity of issues, techniques and arguments which historians have deployed in the study of twentieth-century Scotland.

Adam Smith's hidden hand - markets result in efficient outcomes - doesn't always work. We seek to understand why by using the tool of game theory to analyse how agents interact and discuss market power and externalities.  We then consider other issues in public economics including cost-benefit analysis, fiscal federalism, taxation and crime.  You will also learn more about how to analyse microeconomic data.

This class builds on the Macroeconomics you studied in second year by covering four topics in detail:

• models of economic growth
• the effects of macroeconomic policy in an open economy
• the interrelationships between money growth, output, unemployment and inflation
• the implications of high government debt. 

You will also learn more about how to analyse macroeconomic data. 

The class offers an introduction to the Environmental Humanities through an investigation of human-environment relations from the fifteenth century to the modern day, charting a crucial period of colonialism, commercialism, and globalisation that has shaped how environments are conceptualised, represented, and engaged with across time, space, and cultures. You will examine human attempts to manage, control, know, and live with diverse environments, such as soil, forests, oceans, and lakes.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 sets out a universalising idea of childhood which is assumed to apply across the world.  However, childhood is not a self-evident biological category, but a social construct that has varied across time and space.  By focusing on nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this class seeks to understand how childhood has been imagined throughout history; how children’s lives have been impacted by that changing definition; and how a particular construction of childhood, which emerged in the context of modern Europe, has come to be viewed as universal. 

This class looks at the period of Covenanting rule in Scotland within the wider context of early modern British and European History. Its focus is on the period 1637 to 1651, from the emergence of the Covenanting movement to the Cromwellian conquest of Scotland. These were some of the most turbulent years in British History. In addition to considering political, economic, military, diplomatic, religious and constitutional issues, the course also examines social issues in the context of the drive for a godly society and a significant amount of witch-hunting.

Sexual practices and attitudes to sex have changed dramatically since the nineteenth century. This module will examine how and why these have been transformed through an exploration of the social, cultural and medical history of sex and reproductive health in modern Britain and Ireland from the late Victorian period to beyond the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s. How was sexuality understood by ‘ordinary’ people, the state and the medical profession? How did men and women limit their families? How did sexual and contraceptive practices change over time? In addition to answering these questions, you will examine how sexuality was understood and defined by the medical profession and how responses to reproductive health issues were shaped and influenced by social, political and cultural factors.

As well as introducing you to the main secondary readings on these topics, you will get to grips with a range of primary sources including individuals’ and patients’ narratives, literary texts, visual sources and films. We will assess the power of governments over men and women’s sexual and reproductive rights, for example, through an examination of debates over the legalization of contraception and abortion in two different cultural contexts.

We will also investigate the interactions between sexuality and public health, for instance, by exploring the history of venereal disease and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

You will additionally explore topics such as dating and popular culture, adolescence, sex education, and the sexual revolution, assessing the interactions between sexuality, medicine and society over a period of rapid social change.  

This special subject honours module introduces you to youth cultures of protest, resistance and activism in post-war Britain. The class will discuss movements across Britain, with a focus on Glasgow’s radical history – you will be encouraged to think about major political events ‘from below’ by examining how ‘ordinary’ young people in Britain challenged, influenced or reacted to government policies, state infrastructures and global political events.

You will consider questions like:

• What were the relationships between social movements, youth culture and the state, between organized political parties and spontaneous protests, between activism and humanitarianism?
• What gains were made as a result of political struggles and social movements in this period and what demands were defeated?
• How did social movements and youth subcultures influence popular culture or reimagine everyday spaces, places, institutions and practices?
• What can these histories tell us about how we understand gender, race, class, sexuality, youth, subcultures, work, migration, family life, infrastructure and the environment in Britain today?

More frequently than ever before, secret intelligence has become front-page news. Intelligence and security studies rank among the fastest-growing areas of academic research and public interest. However, the significance of recent intelligence can only be fully understood from a long-term perspective. In the past, learning the historical lessons of intelligence was challenging, more so than for any other profession, primarily because there was scant record of much of its past experiences. Nonetheless, the declassification of archival documents offers us an invaluable and largely unexplored field. This class aims to uncover some of the lost history of global intelligence, to illustrate how it reshapes current historiography, and to highlight its ongoing relevance to intelligence in the twenty-first century. Today, more than ever, national governments, global agencies, and significant multinational corporations have an escalating demand for experts with a profound understanding of intelligence issues, and who can exhibit exceptional analytical and judgment skills.

This special subject module examines the history of modern terrorism and political violence. Each seminar explores the challenges and problems associated with conceptualising terrorism through focusing on primary sources concerning key moments in the development of political violence in a variety of historical contexts.

In Part I of this class we investigate both state and insurrectionary terrorism mainly in the long-nineteenth century, beginning with the French Revolution, then moving to the revolutionary movements of the nineteenth century, colonial violence, white-supremacist terrorism in the United States, to the Suffragettes on the eve of the First World War. The key readings include primary materials such as the Russian terrorist Nechaev’s ‘revolutionary catechism’, anarchists’ court speeches, and Irish nationalists’ private letters about bombing London.

Throughout the course, we will discuss different historical and social science approaches to terrorism, its political uses, and reflect on how it has been represented in media. In doing so, we investigate a topic which holds vital significance in today’s society, though historical perspectives are too often absent from contemporary debates.

This special subject module provides an analysis of the key events and debates in the history of pharmacy.  It studies the creation of pharmacy as a profession from the Greco-Roman traditions, through the medieval apothecary guilds to the establishment of pharmacy education at university level in the twentieth century.  It assesses the struggles between doctors and pharmacists for the rights to dispense prescriptions and to control the medicinal markets and the historical roots of the division within pharmacy between the individual dispensing pharmacists and the establishment of the drug- store chains such as Boots in Britain and Walgreens in the USA.  

The class analyses the ways in which governments have regulated pharmacy defining between professionals and ‘quacks’.  It also studies the historical interaction between society and pharmacy, the challenges posed by the advent of the consumer society, the relationship between the pharmacist and the market and the impact on the drug trade of welfare medicine.

This special subject module introduces you to the social history of women in Ireland over 150 years from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, a period of rapid social and cultural change in the country. The class will appeal if you are interested in understanding how women’s experiences in Ireland have changed over the period and how these experiences have been shaped by gender, religion and class. You will have the opportunity to utilise a range of primary sources, such as women’s magazines, memoirs and personal accounts, feminist publications, novels and literature, as well as drawing on contemporary film sources. We will explore the experiences of women both inside and outside the home, looking at themes such as education and work, institutionalisation, emigration, women's activism, sex work, philanthropy and criminality, as well as private matters such as contraception, marriage, sexuality, and pregnancy. In Semester 1, we will broadly focus on the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and in Semester 2 we will broadly focus on the later twentieth century.

This special subject module involves the detailed study of the 1703 to 1707 period in terms of the making and ratification of the Treaty of Union between England and Scotland. The focus of the class is on the use of primary sources and close reading and interpretation of specialised historiography. You are fully encouraged to articulate and develop your own arguments and thoughts, with regard to some of the most controversial areas of Scotland’s past.

This special subject module examines the debates surrounding the history of European integration with particular focus on the impact of British and French foreign policies on the process and evolution of European unity. Through the analysis of primary and secondary sources, you will develop a critical understanding of the major underlying forces that shaped British and French policies during the period under discussion and assess these policies in the wider context of the international history after 1945. These classes will examine the discussions about European unity that emerged following the Second World War, key developments on the road to closer integration such as the European Coal and Steel Community. You will assess the significance of the Treaties of Rome and examine the themes and deliberations surrounding the European Community’s enlargement. This class will consider the shifting and contested nature of the rhetoric associated with the political integration of Europe and the impact of Britain’s entry.

This class aims to engage you in the examination of themes related to twentieth century political history, as well as the history of communication and of warfare. Through the systematic use of a variety of primary sources, this class is also designed to help you develop a strong appreciation of theories and methodologies of historical research, key skills of the history graduate. This module examines means by which states conduct informal activities to promote their domestic and foreign objectives. In particular, it analyses the role of propaganda throughout the twentieth century, focusing on the use of modern mass communication and technology as well as the relationship between media and state and non-state actors. The class is structured around a number of historical themes, which help shed light on the emergence of propaganda, its interpretation and perception. Key themes analysed throughout the course include the First World War and Second World War as examples of ‘total war’; the growth of international radio broadcasting; the creation of centralised propaganda machines in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Fascist Italy in a comparative dimension. During seminars, you will be exposed to relevant primary source material. Particular attention will be given to understanding the theory and practice of propaganda and analysing how technological developments have contributed to shape modern information and mass persuasion.

The dissertation is an important part of the fourth year programme. Single Honours Economics BA students are required to submit a dissertation in Economics while Joint Honours BA students may submit a dissertation in Economics or in their other Honours subject. 

Information Economics, the topic of this class, considers market failure resulting from uncertainty and information asymmetry. The course looks at two specific examples of market failures: moral hazard and adverse selection. We will discuss policy solutions to reduce the negative impacts of these market failures on society. We will also apply uncertainty to game theory and learn how to find Bayesian Nash Equilibria. Furthermore, we will examine the impact of externalities on social welfare and learn about the optimal provision of public goods.

This class aims to provide you with the required tools to understand current macroeconomic issues, such as the interactions between the banking sector and monetary policy or the policy responses to the global financial crisis.  Throughout the class, the analytical usefulness of the theoretical models taught is illustrated with real-world examples. 

This course investigates the actions that firms in an industry might take to preserve their profit in that industry, and the implications that this has for competition policy and regulation. We take an analytical approach to the issues which will be supported by examining case studies and current events. 

In third year, you will have learned about regression in both a cross-sectional data and time series data context. This class extends that knowledge to two core topics: causal inference and forecasting. Both are highly relevant topics to real-word economics. Understanding the effects of economic policies and decision-making requires careful empirical analysis and understanding of what the data can and cannot tell us. Topics on causal inference build skill in this area. Furthermore, policymakers and economist often want to know something about what to expect, for example of unemployment, given what has happened recently and in the past. Topics in forecasting build skills in this area.

In causal inference, we begin with foundations on how to think about correlation vs. causation and threats to interpreting regression model coefficients as causal effects. We then introduce two methodological approaches. These are instrumental variables and difference-in-differences. Under both we develop the intuition and key assumptions that will allow interpreting statistical results from a regression model as a causal effect from a variable or policy change of interest. We further work with example cases in labs and learn how to implement the methods with data in R, and we use tutorials to think about these methods in action and continue developing the intuition.

In forecasting, we will introduce you to basic tools needed to become a forecaster, such as understanding what a loss function and forecast horizon is. In addition, you will learn various forecasting evaluation techniques to compare competing models.

This class gives a balanced view of the role of finance in promoting long-run economic growth, but also booms and busts. The nature and role of financial intermediaries will be introduced, and, afterwards, formally addressed in a simple aggregate growth model. Empirical evidence will be examined, before turning to the specifics of micro-finance. The importance of financial globalisation will also be investigated. Finally, the rest of the class will be devoted to deciphering the causes and consequences of the current financial crisis.

Behavioural Economics offers alternative theories that merge psychological insights with economic theory and are based on experimental and other evidence, that attempt to provide a better explanation of real-world behaviour.

This class is concerned with exploring these behavioural theories with the aim of providing you with an expanded toolkit with which to approach ‘real-world Economics’ that is based on the burgeoning Behavioural Economics literature that has emerged over the past two or three decades.

After studying this, you should be able to extend much of your previously-learned knowledge in Microeconomics in various directions that take into account more realistic ways of modelling how individuals behave.

The class provides you with an introduction to Natural Resource Economics, Environmental Economics and Energy Economics, establishing connections between the economics and the policy aspects of the class topics. It focuses on the contributions of Economics to understanding environmental, energy and natural resource problems, their causes, and the design of effective public policies to counteract them.