Core modules
Approaches to the Digital
Computer networks, devices and infrastructure today undergird nearly all form of societal, political and cultural life. Police and hospitals, schools and transport, traffic lights and government bodies, elections, museums and artists rely on software systems for their everyday performance.
Whether used for tracking, organising, evaluating, creating, designing or communicating, digital technology and its use irreversibly transforms the fabric of everyday life, defining the horizon of the future. Given the widespread implications of such ‘digitalization,’ this module offers an introduction to how different disciplines beyond computer science have approached the digital methodologically and epistemologically.
Digital Methods
Emerging digital research methods also become means through which such objects are sustained, thus co-creating dynamic objects, such as networks, databases, platforms, data visualizations, maps and many other new forms of social, cultural and public life.
This module offers an insight into these new and emerging societal and cultural entities and methodologies. We will take a number of digital objects relevant to the social sciences and humanities and analyse them using digital methods, including network analysis, software studies, content analysis, issue mapping, and others. Digital media research sits alongside social studies of computational technologies and cultural theory as the fields that emerging digital methods take inspiration from.
The module is open to students from all disciplines; no specific prior knowledge is required.
Dissertation
The dissertation is a piece of work (10,000 words) which addresses a single student-selected subject. The topic may concern any aspect of the subject matter of their Master's programme.
The dissertation is an exercise in independent study in which you can pursue a topic of interest. It allows you to further develop a range of independent research skills, including literature search and bibliography construction, theoretical argument, and generation/appraisal of empirical evidence.
Optional modules
Optional modules can vary from year to year. Example optional modules may include:
- Media Activism
- Data Visualisation in Science, Culture and Public Policy
- User Interface Cultures: Design, Method and Critique
- Digital Feminisms
- Visualisation Foundations
- Digital Sociology
- Platform, Economy and Society
- Ecological Futures: Science, Culture and Media
- Digital Commons: Transforming Software, Research and Culture
- Data Science Across Disciplines: Principles, Practice and Critique
