Module Directory

This team-taught capstone module explores a number of real-world challenges currently confronting the globe from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Through guest lectures from experts in different disciplines, students will be presented with a range of global challenges. In the discussion seminars and in their assessments, students will analyse historical causes and consider strategies to tackle particular challenges.

The aims of this module are:

• To provide students with a grounding in the challenges facing the globe today.


• To explore issues related to global challenges and be able to relate those issues to the relevant political and social contexts.


• To stimulate students to develop skills in written communication through the capstone project and through oral communication and debate in seminars.


• To encourage students to think and write in both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary ways.

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Demonstrate a familiarity with, and an understanding of the material considered on the module, specifically the challenges facing the globe.


2. Draw connections between a diverse range of written forms produced in different geopolitical contexts.


3. Distinguish critically between different methodological and disciplinary approaches to the issues in question.


4. Write in an informed, critical and argumentative manner on the material covered by the module.


5. Define the task in which they are engaged, process large volumes of information and exclude what is irrelevant.


6. Compare and evaluate different arguments and assess the limitations of their own position or procedure, thinking critically and constructively.


7. Write and present verbally a succinct and precise account of positions, arguments, and their presuppositions and implications.


8. Be sensitive to the positions of others and communicate their own views in ways that are accessible to them.


9. Think ‘laterally’ and creatively (i.e. to explore interesting connections and possibilities, and to present these clearly rather than as vague hunches).

Access to water is one of the most urgent global challenges facing us today. Vital for health and well-being, as well as integral to indigenous cultures and industrial processes, water is a threatened commons and contested commodity. In this module, we will explore global and local case studies that highlight challenges of scarcity, contamination, privatization, and climate change, and the cultural importance of bodies of water for diverse communities. We will examine water-related problems, such as economic and urban development, grassroots activism, political conflict, community relations, heritage and well-being. The module will engage with local rivers, such as the River Colne which borders the campus of the University of Essex.

The module is taught by academics from across the University, whose contributions encompass a wide range of fields including policy-making, politics, law, social sciences, the arts and sciences. It will also involve meetings with stakeholders and organizations in the wider community.

This methodology is designed to encourage you to develop a holistic and informed approach to research, project development, teamwork and inspirational leadership that will prepare you for the world beyond your degree.

Among the topics covered by the module are indigenous struggles over water rights at Standing Rock; legislative innovations that provide legal personhood to rivers; grassroots responses to hydropower and industrial development; social movements and art-based activism in response to dam building; the importance of fishing traditions to local Essex identity.

For final year Global Studies students, we recommend combining this module with the spring term 15-credit dissertation module Dangerous Ideas: Manifestos as Social Criticism.

This module will be delivered via:

• One 1-hour lecture per week.
• One 1-hour seminar per week.

There will also be a Reading Week when no teaching will take place, exact week to be confirmed.