Lecture Courses
ECSP offers a wide range of lecture courses and the Individual Research Tutorial. There is no fixed academic path: you choose any two from the list below. Syllabi can be accessed by clicking on the titles:
- Literatures of Modernism
- How to Read Paintings
- The Art of Ghosts (Nineteenth Century to the Present)
- Historians and the Problem of the Archive
- Beyond International Relations- Theories and Challenges of Global Politics
- Anthropology and Climate Change
- Introduction to International Law
- Why Be Good? An Introduction to Ethics
- The Behavioural Ecology of Animals
- The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
- Mathematical Modelling
- Quantum Computer Science
- Individual Research Tutorial Syllabus – click to download an IRT Research Proposal Form
We will endeavour to place you in the two lecture courses selected within your application. We may numbers in a course to ensure classes are small and learning is discussion-based.
While you are free to choose any two lecture courses, we recommend selecting one lecture course within, and one course outside, your major subject, and so take advantage of the opportunity to try something new and different. Some lecture course combinations may be restricted due to timetabling constraints.
Most courses do not have prerequisites and are therefore open to everyone. Please read the lecture course descriptions carefully and take time to choose wisely. Post admission, requests to switch classes will be subject to availability and approval from the Academic Director.
Exeter reserves the right to alter or cancel any course in the event that a lecturer becomes unexpectedly unavailable, or in the unlikely event of a course being undersubscribed. In both cases we will use our best endeavours to find an alternative teacher and/or advise you of the best alternative course.
Faculty
Course: Literatures of Modernism: the Modernist Novel in English, Lecturer: Professor David James
David James is Professor of English at the University of Birmingham, before which he was Reader in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Queen Mary, University of London. His recent books include Discrepant Solace: Contemporary Literature and the Work of Consolation (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Modernist Futures(Cambridge University Press, 2012). He has edited numerous books, including The Legacies of Modernism (Cambridge University Press, 2012), The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction since 1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), and, most recently, Modernism and Close Reading (Oxford University Press, 2020). He is the editor for World Anglophone Writing at Contemporary Literature, and for Columbia University Press, he is founding co-editor of the book series ‘Literature Now’. His new book, Sentimental Activism, is forthcoming with Columbia University Press in 2026.
Course: How to Read Paintings, Lead Lecturer: Dr Rachel Rose Smith
Dr Rachel Rose Smith is a curator, researcher and lecturer, specialising in modern British art. She has studied at the University of Cambridge, Courtauld Institute of Art and the University of York. She has published several essays on modern art connected with St Ives and West Cornwall during the 1940s and 1950s, especially on sculptor Barbara Hepworth. Her most recent publication (2024) was a book on painter Romi Behrens. She is currently editing the catalogue raisonné of paintings and reliefs by Ben Nicholson (forthcoming). She has also worked as founding curator of the Heong Gallery at Downing College, Cambridge, and as Assistant Curator at Tate Britain.
Course: The Art of Ghosts (19th Century to the Present), Lecturer: Professor María del Pilar Blanco
María del Pilar Blanco is Associate Professor in Spanish American Literature and Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Oxford (UK). She is the author of Ghost-Watching American Modernity: Haunting, Landscape, and the Hemispheric Imagination (2012), co-editor, with Joanna Page, of Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America (2020) and, with Esther Peeren, of The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Critical Theory (2013) and Popular Ghosts: The Haunted Spaces of Everyday Culture (2010). She is completing Modernist Laboratories: Science and the Poetics of Progress in Spanish America (1870-1930), which will be published by Oxford University Press.
Course: Historians and the Problem of the Archive, Lecturer: Giuseppe Marcocci
Giuseppe Marcocci is Professor of Early Modern Global History at the University of Oxford and Fellow in History at Exeter College, Oxford. His research focuses on histories of empire, knowledge, and religion, with special but not exclusive reference to the early modern Iberian world. He is the author of The Globe on Paper: Writing Histories of the World in Renaissance Europe and the Americas (2020), and co-editor of Space and Conversion in Global Perspective (2014) and Machiavelli, Islam and the East: Reorienting the Foundations of Modern Political Thought (2018). He is currently completing a book on visual dissent in Spanish and Portuguese colonial cities during the seventeenth century and co-editing, with Yonatan Glazer-Eytan (Princeton), a journal special issue on the intersection of the archival and material turns in early modern history.
Course: Beyond International Relations – Theories and Challenges of Global Politics, Lecturer: Dr Pierre Parrouffe
Dr Pierre Parrouffe is a lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster’s Centre for the Study of Democracy. Pierre has broad research interests including theories of emancipation, critical International Relations, radical political theory, and contemporary continental philosophy. Recent research has focused on conceptualising emancipatory politics through theology, the ontological interactions of contingency and utopia, and the relationship between ‘the people’, knowledge, and conspiracy theories.
Course: Anthropology & Climate Change: Exploring Collective Futures in the Anthropocene Lecturer: Professor Ann H. Kelly
Professor Kelly is a Fellow in Medical Anthropology at Exeter College, Oxford and a Professor in Oxford’s Department of Social Anthropology and Museum Ethnography. She received her BA from Princeton University (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa), where she studied Anthropology and received certificates in European Cultural Studies and Creative Writing. With the support of a Gates Fellowship, Professor Kelly then went on to pursue a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, investigating the relationships and everyday interactions of the local communities and health care workers involved in a clinical trial for a new malaria vaccine in Gambia. That doctoral project raised several (often confounding) questions about the ethics and social value of global health—questions that continue to animate her scholarship.
Over the years, Professor Kelly’s research has benefited hugely from the diverse scientific communities and interdisciplinary settings where she has worked. After completing her doctorate, Ann went on to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where, with the support of a Wellcome Trust Fellowship, she investigated ways of controlling mosquitoes (and the diseases they carry) through improvements in housing and urban infrastructure. Professor Kelly then joined the University of Exeter’s Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology before taking up a position at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. Ann’s last stop before coming to Oxford was Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, where she spent a year working on new approaches to the design and execution of biomedical research under conditions of emergency—a project inspired from a decade of serving as a member of the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) for Ebola Vaccines and Vaccination.
Course: Introduction to International Law, Lecturer: Professor Laura Sjoberg, PhD, JD, SFHEA
Professor Sjoberg is Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford Department of Politics and International Relations, and Kloppenburg Official Tutorial Fellow and Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Exeter College. Prior to joining Oxford, she was British Academy Global Professor of International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London and Professor of International Relations at the University of Florida. She holds a BA in Political Science and History from the University of Chicago, a PhD in International Relations with a certificate in Gender Studies from the University of Southern California, and a Juris Doctorate from Boston College Law School. She has taught International Relations, International Security, International Law, and Trial Advocacy for more than two decades in the United States and the United Kingdom. Dr. Sjoberg’s recent books include Women as Wartime Rapists (New York University Press, 2016), (with J. Samuel Barkin) Interpretive Quantification (University of Michigan Press, 2017), (with Caron E. Gentry and Laura J. Shepherd) Routledge Handbook of Gender and Security (Routledge, 2018), (with J. Samuel Barkin) International Relations’ Last Synthesis? (Oxford, 2019), and (with Jessica Peet) Gender and Civilian Victimization (Routledge, 2019). Her recent articles have explored failure in critical security studies, characterizations of women in and around the Islamic State, what counts as feminist work in Security Studies, sexuality in US-Cuba rapprochement, gendered insecurity, and everyday counterterrorism.
Course: Why Be Good? An Introduction to Ethic, Lecturer: Professor Michael Hannon
Professor Hannon is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham and Honorary Director of the Aristotelian Society—the oldest philosophical society in the UK. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge, King’s College. Michael has published on topics such as the role of truth in politics, the value of knowledge, skepticism, and the importance of empathy.
Course: The Behavioural Ecology of Animals, Lecturer: Dr Ada Grabowska-Zhang
Dr Grabowska-Zhang is a Stipendiary Lecturer in Biological Sciences at Brasenose College (Oxford), a Departmental lecturer in Environmental Sciences and also co-directs the Postgraduate Certificate in Ecological Survey Techniques at the University of Oxford. Ada received both her BA in Biological Sciences in 2008 and her DPhil in Zoology in 2012 from the University of Oxford. Ada has broad research interests ranging from evolutionary ecology to conservation and society. Her doctoral research focused on the behavioural ecology of the great tit (Parus major) and she has subsequently researched ethno-biological approaches to bird conservation, as well as studied bird diversity in urban and fragmented landscapes.
Course: The Ethics of AI, Lecturers: Professor Mona Simion and Professor Christoph Kelp
Mona Simion is Professor of Philosophy and Michael Cohen Fellow of Exeter College at the University of Oxford. Her research is mainly in epistemology, philosophy of language, moral and political philosophy, philosophy of gender and race, philosophy of technology, and philosophy of information. She is the author of several books, including Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence (Cambridge University Press, 2026, with C. Kelp), Knowledge and Conceptual Engineering: The Epistemology, Ethics, and Politics of Meaning Production (Oxford University Press, 2026, with C. Kelp), Resistance to Evidence (Cambridge University Press 2024), Shifty Speech and Independent Thought‘ (Oxford University Press 2021), and Sharing Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 2021, with C. Kelp), as well as of the Cambridge Element Knowledge-First Epistemology: A Defence (Cambridge University Press 2025). In addition, she has co-edited Reasons, Justification, and Defeat (with J. Brown, Oxford University Press 2021). She is the 2018 Mind Fellow and the winner of the Young Epistemologist Prize 2021.
Christoph Kelp is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Cogito Epistemology Research Centre at the University of Glasgow. His research is in epistemology, philosophy of language, ethics, philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, philosophy of science, and philosophy of gender and race. He is the author of several books on topics at the intersection of these fields, including Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence (Cambridge University Press 2026, with M. Simion), Knowledge and Conceptual Engineering: The Epistemology, Ethics, and Politics of Meaning Production (Oxford University Press 2026, with M. Simion), The Nature and Normativity of Defeat (Cambridge University Press2023), Inquiry, Knowledge, and Understanding (Oxford University Press 2021), Sharing Knowledge: A Functionalist Account of Assertion (with M. Simion, Cambridge University Press 2021), and Good Thinking: A Knowledge First Virtue Epistemology (Routledge 2018). In addition, he has co-edited Virtue Theoretic Epistemology: New Methods and Approaches (with J. Greco, Cambridge University Press 2020). He is the winner of the 2017 Young Epistemologist Prize.
Course: Quantum Computer Science, Lecturer: Professor Andrew Steane
Andrew Steane has been teaching and researching in physics since completing his D.Phil. thesis “Laser cooling of atoms” in Oxford in 1991. His research interests spread over a range of areas, but the common theme is elucidating basic principles or ideas. His main work has been in the interface of quantum physics and information science, from both a theoretical and experimental point of view. He co-discovered quantum error correction and initiated the ion trap quantum computing experiments in Oxford. He has also been interested in physics teaching and has written several textbooks aimed at undergraduate study, especially with a view to self-study and understanding in depth.
Course: Mathematical Modelling, Lecturer: Dr Tom Crawford
Dr Crawford is a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford where he teaches mathematics to the first and second year undergraduate students. Tom specialises in Applied Maths and completed his PhD in Fluid Dynamics at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Prof. Paul Linden. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Maths from Oxford in 2012 where he studied at St John’s College.
Alongside his teaching commitments, Tom works closely with the outreach team at Teddy Hall and regularly gives talks in schools and universities across the UK. His award-winning website hosts videos, podcasts, puzzles and articles that aim to make maths entertaining and understandable to all. Tom works with several partners including the BBC and the Numberphile YouTube channel – the largest maths channel on the platform with over pi-million subscribers. His persona the ‘Naked Mathematician’ has even seen Tom become something of a minor celebrity in the world of maths communication as he quite literally strips maths back layer-by-layer…
For the latest updates be sure to follow Tom on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram @tomrocksmaths.
Academic Resources
All ECSP students will have access to Exeter College’s Library, open 24-hours a day, 7-days a week. Students taking an Independent Research Tutorial will also have access to ‘the Bodleian’, a collection of 28 libraries that serve the University of Oxford. To further support your studies, ECSP Faculty will provide course readers and supplementary resources. You will be advised of any pre-course reading prior to the start of the Programme.
