Subject taster workshops

Ever watched an advert for something and felt like you just had to have it? Interested in being more mindful about your consumption? This sessions explores how businesses use psychological tactics to understand and influence their consumers when advertising products and services. Through a series of interactive activities, students will become clued up on all things consumer psychology and carry out advert analysis to test their recognition of advertising strategies.

Dive into the thrill of a simulated market experience! This session introduces students to key economic concepts, such as supply and demand, market structures and pricing strategies, through a series of interactive activities, which put them in the shoes of both consumers and business owners! Using real-life scenarios, this session will help to develop students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills as they balance economics with ethics and explore how business decisions are impacted by different competitive markets.

This session will give an overview of climate change, including the importance of climate change and key processes that are driving climate change including the burning of fossil fuels and volcanic activity. Students will be challenged to consider the importance of natural and human drivers of climate change which will lead into a class debate on what the largest driver of climate change is. Students will also look at the effects of climate change from rising sea levels to risk to food security, and consider actions that can be taken to tackle global climate change. 

This interactive session will give students an overview of the presence and impact of microplastics in the environment. The aim of this workshop is to develop students' understanding of microplastics, gaining a detailed introduction to microplastic pollution - an issue that has prompted recent headlines due to the scale of the problem. Key themes covered in this session include sources of microplastics, how they are transferred through the environment and their impacts in the environment on living organisms. Students will then apply the knowledge they have gained throughout the session by creating new government strategies to combat microplastic pollution in the environment.  

This session aims to provide students with a basic understanding of human rights. Specially, this interactive workshop will cover definitions and applications of human rights law, with a large focus on international human rights law (i.e. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights), as well as some information about British Human Rights Law (i.e. Human Rights Act 1998). The informational content will be supplemented by various group activities and discussions.

When most people hear about tax law, they think that it is boring and too technical. However, tax law is far from boring and permeates almost every aspect of our lives. A simple act such as grocery shopping triggers so many tax aspects behind the scene of which many of us are oblivious. What’s more is that globalization and digitization, including the use of AI, are changing how tax law has traditionally been perceived, hence the need for knowledge building on the area. With the belief in mind that no one is too young to learn about taxes and given that we all pay some form of tax during our lifetimes, this session will cover the elementary aspects of tax law, address the societal implications and recent advancements in tax as well as the place of legal professionals in the field.

This session will allow students to explore the compulsory topics and modules that they will cover if they study a Law LLB at university. From to contract law to human rights law, participants will develop their understanding of the undergraduate course structure and begin to refine transferable skills and study strategies that will help them to succeed on the course.

In this interactive and lively workshop you will learn about the idea of Parliamentary debates, the importance of them, and why they are such a key part of democracy. Covering everything from “What’s better, cats or dogs?” right through to “Should euthanasia be legalised?”, you will uncover how debating impacts on decisions made that determine the future of the country.

Please note that this session is available as a series of three separate one-hour sessions (designed to take place across the course of the year)  or as a standalone session.

When you think about pirates, what do you think about? A movie you’ve seen? A book you’ve read? A costume you’ve seen over and over again at Halloween parties? Pirates have been commercialised but the history of piracy seems to have been forgotten.

Did you know pirates held democratic elections for positions of power on their ships at a time when just 3% of people in England could vote, that women and people of colour had significantly more rights on many pirate ships than on nearby continents and that the first health insurance system in recorded history was set up by a pirate?

The session will look at pirates in popular culture, the history of piracy, the role of pirates in the transatlantic slave trade, assessing the argument whether or not pirates were ‘floating proletarians’ and the dark side of piracy.

Passionate about the climate emergency we’re in? Interested in finding out more about the people and groups that call the shots? This session will allow students to explore the key global actors that influence change and give them the opportunity to role-play as these actors. Culminating in a big debate, students will argue their case for or against a controversial policy, evaluate the arguments made and reach a decision on whether or not the policy will be implemented. At the end of the session students will reflect on their work and discuss how a policy in one part of the world may have implications on another, aiming to shift away from a Western focus point.

Lots of people dream of making a difference and advancing a more equal world, but how can one effectively make it happen? One of the most crucial interventions to addressing local and global inequalities is through advocacy. Advocacy goes beyond NGOs and government and comes down to communities and individuals. Whether focused on human rights, environmental sustainability, or social justice, advocacy transcends local and global borders to unite people.

This session will help learners explore how global and challenges can be mitigated through advocacy, how to advance an effective advocacy, transform public perceptions and attitudes, and how to mobilize resources. It will focus on the faces of advocacy in global development and how it influences development policy and potentially inequality. This will be an interactive session that will allow learners to critically and creatively select a local challenge and build a strong advocacy intervention for it.

Embark on a journey to explore the connections between diplomacy and language!

Through engaging discussions, discover how language and intercultural awareness shape international interactions, and enhance your understanding of global issues. Find out more about International Relations and Languages degrees, exciting career prospects in fields such as diplomacy, interpreting and journalism, and the benefits of learning about global affairs. Gain first-hand experience of diplomatic negotiations in a Model United Nations activity, where you will be acting as representatives of various countries to discuss the impact of the climate emergency, honing your negotiation and public speaking skills.

This workshop is suitable for all year groups. Students will be required to undertake a short research task as part of the Model United Nations activity and will need access to tablets, laptops or their phones.

This session is an introduction to disability studies, aiming to challenge students with a new area of sociology and give them a taster of some of the topics that might be covered at university-level. Students will explore the medical and social models of disability and will be encouraged to think about the barriers that disabled people face as they storyboard their journeys to school. They will also begin to develop university-level skills including reading and interpretation as they develop a glossary of key terms and engage with academic literature!

This session will introduce students to sociology by focusing on an area that most students are already engaged – social media. The class will be split in half, with one side focusing on the pros of social media, and the other looking at the cons. Students will explore their side of the argument in detail, before teaching it to their peers on the other side of the argument and engaging in a mini debate. They will then work in groups to design their own social media profile which will either represent an example of a positive or a toxic social media influencer. The session aims to encourage students to think critically about the role of social media in our lives, and to start thinking about the type of content that they engage with and the impact it has on social media users.

In this workshop, we will explore the relationship between individual and group identity through the example of school uniform. Participants will be encouraged to think critically about arguments for and against school uniform, including how such norms may disadvantage some individuals and how they could be reimagined in an accessible way.  

We will examine how structure and agency shape experiences of dress by drawing on theories of power and identity. These will help us to raise questions, such as how is dress used to negotiate control by institutions and to what extent can identities be managed through dress? 

By the end of this session, participants will have developed an understanding of the societal implications of dress, through activities which apply sociological theories to the everyday social practice of dressing for school.