Module Catalogue 2024/25

Pre Requisite Comment

N/A

Co Requisite Comment

N/A

Aims

Urban anthropology, sociology and geography provide theoretical, empirical and methodological tools for exploring and understanding cities and urban experiences. The ever-growing body of literature examines a range of interconnected topics including:

- Poverty, inequality, dispossession, destruction, social (in)justice and crisis urbanism.

- The built environment, urban development, capital flows, neoliberalisation and financialisation.

- Contentious urban politics, citizenship, security, right to the city.

- Households, relationships, lifestyles and selves.

- Precarious urban worlds: work, the home, occupying the city

- Re-making the city: The creative city: experimentation, gentrification

- Race, racism, multiculturalism, and conviviality.

- Feminist and Queer approaches to theorising the city

- Planetary urbanism, Comparative Urbanism

- Understanding the climate crisis: urban Anthropocene, urban ecology

- Postcolonial urban theory and imperial legacies in British cities.

- Urban imaginaries, the role of desires, dreams, surrealism, art in understanding urban life.

Aims:

1) For students to become familiar with and demonstrate expertise in a range of research on cities and urban experiences from urban anthropology, sociology, and geography, through a range of learning and assessment methods.

2) For students to have the opportunity to further develop advanced research skills through inquiry and analysis of specific topics, issues or problems relating to cities and urban lives.

3) For students to develop critical, theoretically informed approaches to understanding, exploring and reporting on urban topics, issues or problems that demonstrate independent thinking.

Outline Of Syllabus

This module will introduce students to a range of topics related to cities and urban experience and critical approaches to the study of key issues and processes in contemporary urban life. This will include scholarships from across urban anthropology, sociology, and geography, and involve a range of experiential and multi-media engagements. Students will learn about these topics through a focus on the surrounding city of Newcastle-Gateshead, as well as national and global experiences, and will have the opportunity to explore a chosen topic in-depth through their research project.

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

At the end of the module the successful student will be able to:

1.Critically discuss and evaluate a range of research on cities and urban experience.

2. Provide an advanced rationale for their learning and research activities undertaken throughout the module, and link these to their wider master's studies.

3. Apply contemporary urban research to analysis of specific problems, issues or phenomena being studied and produce a report on this.

Intended Skill Outcomes

At the end of the module the successful student will be able to:

1. Understand and critically evaluate urban anthropological and sociological debates, situate in broader academic understandings and apply these to a specific case and to their wider master’s studies.

2. Identify and interrogate specific problems and issues, and plan and conduct a research project in order to explore and understand this.

3. Analyse data and formulate and clearly communicate complex arguments verbally and in writing.

4. Demonstrate understanding of own learning through specific evidence of activities undertaken on the module.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Fieldtrips utilise city as a resource and help students gain ideas and develop focus for their research projects. They are scaffolded by specific themes, which we critically engage with in the classroom reflection, drawing on ongoing research happening at Newcastle University, bringing urban theory to life.

Lectures in first half of module introduce students to key ideas, themes and methods in urban studies.

The studio allows for a collaborative, creative approach to the research project, drawing on studio-based learning in the arts, where the teaching team will be engaging with students throughout the session with structured and unstructured tasks, with ongoing feedback from staff and peer feedback.

Lectures/ invited talks in second half of the module enable development of specific themes in urban studies and can be responsive depending on available speakers, student interests and current staff research.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Assessment enables knowledge and skills developed in the module to be fully assessed.

Assessment is via a Module Portfolio in two parts, overall word count 3500 (+/- 10%)

100% portfolio submitted at the end of the module

40% Learning journal of engagement on the module; and reflection on how their learning connects to their broader master’s studies and goals.

Part A. Photo (or video) used to document and reflect on learning activities on the module. This can be in preferred format (e.g. social media, physical notebook, video montage or simple photos + captions). A bespoke marking criteria will be created for this.

Part B. Reflection on what you did on the module, how you challenged yourself, and what went well or not so well, and how this connects to your broader master's studies and goals. A bespoke marking criteria will be created for this.

Intended knowledge outcomes: 1 - 3

Intended skill outcomes: 1 – 4

60% research project report. 2700 words approximately. Identify a problem, issue or phenomena to explore, decide which methods to use, plan, conduct research and write it up. Students will draw on literature from urban anthropology, sociology and geography as well as primary research in order to make an argument about the issues being explored. Appendices can be used to demonstrate research gathered.

Intended knowledge outcomes: 1 and 3

Intended skill outcomes: 1 - 3

General Notes

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