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.
The 2024 lecture courses are listed below (syllabi can be accessed by clicking on the titles):
- Literatures of Modernism
- How to Read Paintings and Buildings
- 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
- Behavioural Economics
- Introduction to International Law
- Why Be Good? An Introduction to Ethics
- The Behavioural Ecology of Animals
- Forensic Linguistics
- Numerical Algorithms for Linear Algebra, Optimization, and Deep Learning
- Quantum Computer Science
- Computational Medicine
- Individual Research Tutorial Syllabus – click to download an IRT Research Proposal Form
We will endeavour to place you in your first-choice lecture courses but ask you to provide a reserve choice in your application, as your first choice may already be filled. We limit numbers in each course to ensure you receive the small-class, discussion-based learning experience we offer.
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. You will have an opportunity to request to switch classes in Week 1, but this 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: Dr Michael Mayo
Dr Michael Mayo was a first-generation student at Harvard College, where he received an honours degree in English. After working as a teacher and principal at urban public schools, he received his M.A. in English from Middlebury College and an MSc in Literature and Modernity from the University of Edinburgh. For his DPhil (on James Joyce) he came to Oxford, where he was a lecturer at Exeter College; he is now the Junior Research Fellow in English at Worcester College, Oxford. He is currently writing a book based on his DPhil research on the formal relations between the texts of James Joyce and Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, the order of priests who taught Joyce at school. He uses psychoanalytic theory, particularly that of Melanie Klein, to trace the ways both Loyola and Joyce use frustration and satisfaction to drive their readers into a peculiar position, one both hermeneutic and existential, ironic and earnest, tragic and (potentially) hilarious. Still a lecturer teaching Exeter undergraduates, as a Fellow of Worcester College, he teaches Literature in English from 1830 to the present, with special focus on modernist narrative. Read more about Dr Michael Mayo here.
Course: How to Read Paintings and Buildings, Lead Lecturer: Dr Emily Guerry
Emily Guerry is a Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Kent, where her research examines the art and architecture of devotion in medieval Europe, with a focus on wall paintings. Born in San Francisco, California, she attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a D-1 volleyball scholarship and left with a passion for medieval art history. She completed her MPhil and PhD in the History of Art at Pembroke College, Cambridge thanks to an ORS scholarship, followed by a Junior Research Fellowship in the History of Art at Merton College, Oxford.
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: Behavioural Economics, Lecturer: Professor Michalis Drouvelis
Professor Drouvelis is a Professor of Behavioural Economics at the University of Birmingham. His research interests lie in the area of behavioural and experimental economics. Recent work has focused on social preferences, on voluntary cooperation in the presence of free rider incentives, on expression of emotions and on coordination games. Professor Drouvelis’s research has been published in top academic peer-reviewed journals such as Games & Economic Behavior, Journal of Public Economics, European Economic Review, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Journal of Economic Psychology, Experimental Economics, Theory and Decision, Southern Economic Journal, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics and Economics Letters. Professor Drouvelis is also the author of the highly successful book Social Preferences: An Introduction to Behavioural Economics and Experimental Research and is affiliated with CESifo (Munich). He also serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization and European Economic Review and is Coordinating Editor for Theory and Decision.
Course: Introduction to International Law, Lecturer: Professor Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne
Professor Hill-Cawthorne is an Associate Professor in Public International Law at the University of Reading, where he teaches on the LLB (Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Trusts Law and International Law) and the LLM (International Humanitarian Law and International Dispute Settlement). Prior to joining Reading in 2013, he was a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Public International Law at the University of Oxford, where he was also completing his doctorate. He was also previously a Stipendiary Lecturer in Law at Merton College, Oxford. Other previous positions include British Research Council Fellow at the John W Kluge Center, Library of Congress, Washington DC, Convenor of the Oxford Public International Law Discussion Group, and Treasurer & Member of the Executive Committee of Oxford Pro Bono Publico. Lawrence’s research interests cut across a number of topics within public international law, with his recent work focusing on international dispute settlement, international humanitarian law, international human rights law and international criminal law. His monograph, Detention in Non-International Armed Conflict, which was published in 2016 by Oxford University Press, was awarded the American Society of International Law’s 2016 Francis Lieber Prize for best book in the field of international law and armed conflict as well as the 11th Paul Reuter Prize (administered by the International Committee of the Red Cross). His scholarship has been cited by, amongst others, the UK Court of Appeal and UK Supreme Court. Lawrence has acted as advisor to, inter alia, United Nations Special Rapporteurs, the International Bar Association, and the European Parliament, as well as to legal practitioners in cases appearing before UK courts.
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: Forensic Linguistics, Lecturers: Professor Luna Filipović and Professor Maria Gomez-Bedoya
Professor Filipović (PhD Cantab) is a Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California Davis. She received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Cambridge, funded by a Leventis Foundation scholarship and Cambridge Overseas Trust grant. She held two postdoctoral fellowships, one in psycholinguistics at the Department of Psychology, University College London, sponsored by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and one in linguistics at the Department of Linguistics, Cambridge, supported by the Leverhulme Trust and Newton Trust. She has authored/co-authored and edited/co-edited 8 books and numerous journal articles and peer-reviewed book chapters. Her specialisation is in forensic linguistics, experimental psycholinguistics, and bilingualism. Her most recent monograph Bilingualism in Action: Theory and Practice (2019) was published by Cambridge University Press. Recent research examines language effects on memory and on the description and translation of witnessed events. Professor Filipović has conducted experiments showing how a specific language spoken by a witness or suspect can affect the quantity and quality of information given, and how, why and when this information can be distorted in translation, impacting witness memory and jury judgments. She has advised the UK Government on the integration of randomised control trials into policy-making in her role as a select member of the Cross-Whitehall Expert Advisory Panel. She has studied multilingual police interviews in both the UK and the US for 20 years and discovered important problems in police communication and police interpreting. She leads a multidisciplinary project TACIT – Translation and Communication in Training (www.tacit.org.uk), which feeds the latest research findings on bilingualism and communication into training materials for police officers, language professionals and university educators.
Maria Gomez-Bedoya has been Associate Professor in Spanish at the University of East Anglia since 2015. She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics, a degree in English Language and Communication, and two Masters in Spanish Teaching and Hispanic Linguistics. Her research focuses on empathic communication and soft skills applied to legal and educational contexts. She has an international background and has worked in several countries as a teacher, teacher trainer, and team manager, bringing with her intercultural experience and soft skills knowledge. Before joining UEA she worked for the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan and Brazil, as a Fulbright Scholar in USA, and as a presenter in NHK Japan National Public Broadcasting Organization, among others. She is currently a trainer in Forensic Linguistics for one of the national Spanish police forces.
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: Numerical Algorithms for Linear Algebra, Optimization, and Deep Learning, Lecturer: Professor Jared Tanner
Jared Tanner is the Professor of the Mathematics of Information in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford where he leads the Data Science Research Group. Prof. Tanner joined Oxford in 2012, and previously held positions at the University of Edinburgh, University of Utah, Stanford University, and the University of California at Davis. His research contributions have focused on the design, analysis, and application of numerical algorithms for questions involving information processing. His primary research programme at the moment concerns the study of deep learning.
Course: Computational Medicine, Lecturer: Dr Hector Martinez-Navarro
Dr Hector Martinez-Navarro is a senior researcher in cardiac physiology. His background is interdisciplinary, as he holds BSc and MSc degrees in Computer Science and a second MSc degree in Human Physiology. In 2019 he obtained his DPhil degree at Oxford in the Computational Cardiovascular Science (CCS) group led by Prof Blanca Rodriguez, at the Department of Computer Science. In the following years, he held a Postdoctoral Fellow position at the Oslo University Hospital and finally, in October 2022, returned as a Senior Postdoctoral Research Associate to the CCS group. During the last decade, he has gathered extensive experience in teaching, supervising and research dissemination activities. Dr Martinez-Navarro’s current research focuses on exploiting computer simulations of cardiac electrophysiology to investigate the dynamics of cardiac arrhythmias and their relevance to clinical intervention, a project conducted in alliance with a leading company in the design and manufacturing of cardiac defibrillation devices. Additionally, he is part of a collaboration with a pharmaceutical company to use in silico trials to assess the safety and efficacy of drug therapies to improve cardiac contractility.
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.
