MyGlasgow Students

'Leading Change: Policy in Action' at a glance:

This course is available in Semester: 2. Course code: SPS1013 Credits: 20.

What will I learn from this course?

Leading Change: Policy in Action invites students to step into the world of real policy leadership, exploring how bold ideas, diverse perspectives, and practical tools can drive meaningful social change. Through interactive workshops, debates, practitioner insights, and hands‑on group work, students will unpack why policy succeeds or fails, map the complex forces shaping issues like poverty, and experiment with creative, disruptive solutions. Working in interdisciplinary teams, students will develop and pitch an ambitious policy solution, building skills in negotiation, collaboration, ethical leadership, and evidence‑based decision‑making. The course is led by Dr Claire Macrae from the Centre for Public Policy, capitalising on Professor Dugdale's two decades of experience shaping public policy in the United Kingdom as a prominent legislator, party leader, campaigner, writer and broadcaster. By the end of the course, students will be equipped to think like change makers and act like future leaders committed to fairer, more sustainable societies.

How will I be assessed on this course?

The course ILOs are:

• ILO 1: Understand how public policy works and how policy leadership can drive — or fail to drive — change.
• ILO 2: Use diverse disciplinary perspectives - from the social sciences to science and engineering - to rethink big policy problems and map their complex drivers.
• ILO 3: Apply practical policy tools - such as policy mapping, negotiation, and project design - to identify, design and justify feasible interventions that drive solutions to big policy problems.
• ILO 4: Collaborate to create and communicate innovative, ethical policy solutions for real‑world challenges, showing leadership, empathy and a commitment to contributing to fairer and more sustainable societies.

What unique learning experiences will I have on this course?

Students will benefit from direct engagement with the Centre for Public Policy (CPP), a unit within the College of Social Sciences that specialises in connecting research evidence to practice. The CPP will leverage its network of practitioners and its expertise in applied public policy to support and enhance the student experience. Students will also be guided in how to produce blogs, develop effective communication skills, and engaging presentations. They will have the opportunity to engage directly with practitioners, for example, officials from the UK or Scottish Government, former parliamentarians, and third sector leaders.

This creates a learning environment where theory is continuously tested against real world policy challenges. Students will develop a clear understanding of where policy skills can take them and what it looks like to work across different professional settings. They will engage in distinctive, practice-focused learning experiences that mirror the complexities of real policy work and governance. Central to the course is the Group Project - where students assume a designated

role as practitioners seeking disruptive solutions to longstanding policy challenges, such as poverty and inequality. This exercise allows them to navigate the realities of competing interests, incomplete evidence, political pressures, and ethical dilemmas while designing workable policy responses.

Who are the course leaders?

Claire MacRae is leading this course.

'Not just politics as usual: The John Smith Centre guide to making change' at a glance:

This course is available in Semester: 1. Course code: SPS1012 Credits: 20.

What will I learn from this course?

This course aims to give you an understanding of how to campaign for and bring about political change locally, nationally, and globally. It gives you different perspectives on who has power, how to use it, and what is needed for change to occur. Run by the John Smith Centre, the course offers insights from people working in a range of sectors relating to politics, including journalism, business, and charities, with the aim of prompting you to think critically about power and change.

The course also aims to equip you with the negotiation and collaboration skills needed to produce a campaign strategy and materials in a team. As well as the practical skills involved in producing the materials, the course also aims to develop your communication skills around the campaign and its target audiences.

Finally, the course aims to develop your cognition skills through justifying and evaluating your campaign, how it speaks to its target audiences, and how it relates to your own life and appeals to you. Aligning with the John Smith Centre’s focus on opening doors to public and political life for all, including marginalised groups, the campaign activities of the course will focus on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal to reduce inequality within and among countries.

How will I be assessed on this course?

The course ILOs are assessed in the following ways:

• ILO 1: Negotiate and collaborate in diverse groups, including navigating political divides, competing priorities and ideas, and different approaches to working.
• ILO 2: Create campaign strategies and a range of campaign materials collaboratively, and provide justification for the decisions that shaped both.
• ILO 3: Communicate campaign ideas, priorities and demands or requests in person and digitally, including across political divides.
• ILO 4: Evaluate campaigns, including how they seek to bring about change, who their target audiences are, and how they relate to your life and appeal to you.

What unique learning experiences will I have on this course?

This course offers a combination of practitioner-led learning, collaborative campaign work, and practical application. You will learn through guest presentations and Q&A sessions with people working across politics, journalism, business, and charities, providing different perspectives on power, political change, and campaigning. Weekly tutorials use simulations and campaign-focused activities to apply lecture content. Working in teams, you will develop a campaign strategy and create a portfolio of campaign materials, before individually reflecting on and evaluating your campaign. The course focuses on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal to reduce inequality within and among countries, encouraging you to think critically about power, change, and how campaigns relate to different audiences and your own experiences.

Who are the course leaders?

Joe Greenwood-Hau is leading this course.

'Collective Action in the Wild, Wild West End' at a glance:

This course is available in Semester: 1. Course code: ECON1015 Credits: 20.

What will I learn from this course?

This course aims to explore broadly accessible theories of collective action, conflict, and societal transformation in real-world contexts. Through engagement with Glasgow’s West End, students will then apply these theories to build skills in identifying local challenges, gathering qualitative and quantitative evidence, and proposing small-scale, actionable solutions to local issues (while realizing the possibility of various setbacks in the latter). The course also aims to foster creative and critical thinking through the extension of learned theories to progress towards building sustainable communities and scale the collective action efforts beyond Glasgow’s West End.

Finally, the course aims to strengthen the students as future global citizens and change-makers by developing their skills in leadership, collaboration, ethical decision-making, evaluative judgement and empathy through meaningful and iterative assessment, peer- and self-review, dialogic feedback and local community engagement.

How will I be assessed on this course?

The course ILOs are:

• ILO 1: Foster effective communication, listening and empathy towards collective action and its surrounding complexities.
• ILO 2: Critically analyse what a community is and explore its role in collective action.
• ILO 3: Identify societal issues in a specific geographic region (i.e. Glasgow West End) through equipped theoretical lenses and small-scale fieldwork.
• ILO 4: Design context-aware collective action plans that address identified issues and promote change in a specific geographic region.
• ILO 5: Help build sustainable communities by reiterating, refining and reinvigorating collective action projects while acknowledging and learning from related setbacks.

What unique learning experiences will I have on this course?

In this course, students will experience a unique blend of first-hand creative learning and assessment approaches. In classes, students will be exposed to work-like experiential activities through drama, roleplaying, emotive listening and reflective exercises.

Our key selling point here is perhaps our West End Change-Maker project, where students scrutinize their familiar West End area for social/political/economic issues and implement small but feasible collective action plans to move the wheels of change. In this assessment, students will learn about work by examining the real-world practices of collective action, societal change and community organization, seeing how they play out contextually in the West End of Glasgow.

Students also learn through work in this project, by engaging with actual, feasible social change based around the real-life constraints and dynamics between people living in the West End.

Another unique element is the sheer flexibility our assessments offer which allows students to really flex their creative muscles and set toward the path of creative leaders and social innovators.

Who are the course leaders?

Vladimir Maltsev is leading this course.

'Justice and the Restitution of Cultural Heritage' at a glance:

This course is available in Semester: 2. Course code: SOCIO1021 Credits: 20.

What will I learn from this course?

This course aims to equip students to be reflective, globally engaged, and socially responsible citizens by critically examining social and cultural justice, through the lens of the restitution of cultural heritage.

The aims of the course are to develop a nuanced understanding of the complex ethical, legal and political dimensions of cultural heritage as a tool for social justice. This course equips students to critically evaluate the common-sense assumptions about heritage ownership, preservation, and protection that are largely shaped by dominant Western narratives. By challenging these inherited frameworks, students will deepen their understanding of what a genuinely decolonized engagement with heritage, identity and justice requires, while prompting them to reflect on their own positionality as global citizens. Through applied case study analysis, reflexive practice, and engagement with real-world policy and institutional contexts, students will develop the capacity to assess and communicate complex ethical and political issues to diverse audiences, think critically across disciplinary boundaries, and propose equitable, context-sensitive responses tojustice claims.

This approach enables students to grapple with the complexities of global governance, diplomacy, and ethical practice, while deepening their understanding of how heritage informs collective memory and contemporary struggles for equity and recognition. Drawing on diverse scholarship, legal frameworks, and their application within justice movements, students will strengthen key skills such as critical thinking, cross-cultural analysis and collaboration, ethical reasoning, policy and legal evaluation, and applied research methods. Ultimately, the course equips students to contribute meaningfully to ongoing debates on inequality, Indigenous sovereignty, and social justice, fostering collaborative and impact-driven approaches to cultural heritage in diverse global contexts.  

How will I be assessed on this course?

The course ILOs are:

• ILO 1: Communicate complex ethical, legal, and political issues surrounding cultural heritage ownership and restitution in a clear and accessible format.
• ILO 2: Contextualize contemporary heritage justice debates by explaining how colonialism, imperialism, conflict and global trade contributed to the displacement of cultural objects, natural resources and ancestral remains.
• ILO 3: Demonstrate reflexive awareness by articulating and critically reflecting on their own positionality, assumptions, and ethical standpoint in relation to heritage justice and restitution.
• ILO 4: Critically evaluate competing frameworks for heritage stewardship, including dominant Western models and decolonised, rights-based approaches to cultural sovereignty.
• ILO 5: Develop and present coherent, evidence-based arguments that analyse real-world case studies and advance equitable, community-centred, and socially just approaches to cultural heritage governance across diverse global contexts.

What unique learning experiences will I have on this course?

Students on ‘Justice and the Restitution of Cultural Heritage’ will engage in a set of unique learning experiences that enhance their academic, professional and

personal development:

Through problem and object-based learning, real world case analysis (informed by the ongoing research of the course coordinator), and interaction with contemporary debates, students gain specialist insight into the ethical, legal and political complexities of cultural heritage, which functions as a platform for some of the most pressing debates of our time (such as postcolonial justice, human rights and reparations). This cultivates an interdisciplinary awareness of how cultural diplomacy and social justice intersect in practice.

By continuously stimulating critical analysis of assumptions and stereotypes, the course also fosters cross-cultural sensitivity and the ability to formulate evidence-based arguments, which are key employability skills in a wide range of sectors (e.g. heritage, policy, research, NGOs, and the cultural sector).

Although this is a sensitive and often contentious topic in which students are likely to form strong opinions, the course encourages critical engagement and reflexivity to help them work productively with that complexity. In doing so, students learn to navigate controversy and hold multiple, even conflicting, perspectives simultaneously—an essential skill in today’s increasingly polarized political landscape.

Through peer dialogue and reflective practice, students enhance their interpersonal and communication skills, learning to articulate complex ideas through multiple formats and to a range of audiences.

The focus on reflexivity and development of diverse creative research outputs further enhances students’ ability to work ethically and reflexively in professional contexts, working towards a more just workplace and world.

Who are the course leaders?

Emiline Smith is leading this course.

'Transforming our futures: how to build equitable and just societies' at a glance:

This course is available in Semester: 1. Course code: BIOL1020 Credits: 20.

What will I learn from this course?

The course aims to develop students’ skills in critical analysis, interpretation, and discussion of issues related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals from a STEM‑informed but interdisciplinary perspective. It encourages students to examine how knowledge is constructed, communicated, and valued, and to reflect on how their own positionality shapes their engagement in professional contexts. Through explicit engagement with SDGs such as SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 10

(Reduced Inequalities), and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions), the course supports students to cultivate critical awareness of equity, inclusion, and socially responsible citizenship. Students will learn to translate their learning into public‑facing, evidence‑informed communication by designing and presenting a publicity campaign for a defined audience; and to work collaboratively and inclusively, drawing on peer and staff feedback to refine ideas and communicate them professionally.

How will I be assessed on this course?

The course ILOs are:

• ILO 1: Critically reflect on personal learning and professional development across the course, evaluating how perspectives and assumptions have changed over time using relevant concepts and evidence.
• ILO 2: Apply decolonial principles to disciplinary concepts and analyse a contemporary equity or inclusion challenge linked to a selected SDG, identifying root causes, relevant power dynamics and interpreting the implications for action.
• ILO 3: Design and deliver a coherent publicity campaign aligned to a chosen SDG by developing clear aims, target audiences, key messages, and an appropriate communication format (oral/poster/video), supported by an evidence‑informed rationale.
• ILO 4: Collaborate effectively and inclusively in a diverse team to co-construct knowledge and deliver shared outputs, by agreeing roles and ways of working, communicating professionally, managing disagreement constructively, and using co-created criteria to give, receive, and act on peer and staff feedback to iteratively improve both individual contributions and the group campaign.

What unique learning experiences will I have on this course?

In this course, you will take part in learning experiences that go beyond traditional lectures and classroom activities. You will have the opportunity to help co-create assessment rubrics, giving you a voice in defining what successful work looks like and helping shape the criteria used for assessment.

Throughout the semester, you will be encouraged to identify and develop key skills, with opportunities to apply them in a range of different contexts. These skills will be strengthened through collaborative activities, project work, and active learning tasks that support both individual and group learning.

As part of your reflective assessment, you will look back on your learning journey, evaluating how your knowledge, skills, and confidence have developed over the course and considering how these can be applied within your own discipline and future studies or career.

Learning will take place in a variety of settings, which may include museums and other relevant venues, providing opportunities for hands-on, applied, and experiential learning. These experiences will help you connect course concepts with real-world examples, encouraging you to link theoretical knowledge with lived experiences and professional practice.

Who are the course leaders?

Shaun Bremner-Hart is leading this course.

'Does Scotland need human rights? Mobilising for change with civil society' at a glance: 

This course is available in Semester 2, 2027. Course code: SPS1010. Credits: 20. 

Teaching begins in the week commencing Monday the 12th of January and ends on the week commencing Monday the 23rd of March, and can be taken alongside 'Making sense of problem substance abuse in Scotland' another 10 credit C4L course running in Semester 2.

What will I learn from this course?

Do you know, that in 2025, the United Nations raised 90 distinct concerns about the UK’s record on human rights? Human rights are central to our daily lives. Many people recognise their right to be respected and to receive dignifying treatment but would not understand that this was anchored in human rights. Similarly, they may have some understanding of what the United Nations do, or are familiar with UK legislation such as the Human Rights Act, but not understand what difference these structures and tools can make to everyday lives and communities. This course is designed to consider how Scotland can get back on track. More than telling you what I know, I will share what I do, building relationships with civil society to help communities name and claim their rights. I aim to help you develop a broader perspective and critical understanding of rights issues, to cultivate your appreciation of various viewpoints and responsibilities as global and local citizens, and to develop your problem-solving ability through lectures and discussion of the key human rights issues.

How will I be assessed on this course?

What unique learning experiences will I have on this course?

You will work in teams to identify a challenge that falls within the themes of human rights, and challenging poverty in Scotland. You will be encouraged to consider your role within the challenge, drawing on broader disciplinary content and or skills. In week 2 each team will submit a 200-word outline of their challenge as a formative assessment. Strong examples will be shared with the entire class with the permission of team members. General formative feedback will also be provided to help students steer their team towards articulation of a challenge that links to human rights and poverty.   

The first summative assignment is produced individually, drawing on team discussions. Each student submits a poster, with a word count of around 500 words plus images. The poster should articulate the group’s shared challenge and outline the student (and by extension their discipline’s) contribution to shaping the problem and imagining solutions.   

The second summative assignment is submitted at the same time. Reflexive engagement focusing on either: team-working (including barriers experienced); building an interdisciplinary solution; opportunities working with civil society. The reflexive piece should also be 500 words.

What kind of partners will I work with on this course? 

Making Rights Real was founded in 2020 and works with communities towards rights realisation. The Director, Clare McGillivray will join us for discussion on how we build sustainable relationships, speak truth to power and change the world. We also hope to draw on the expertise of colleagues at the Scottish Human Rights Commission, globally recognised for their excellence.  

Who is the course leader?

Professor Jo Edson Ferrie is leading this course.