CIM and University of Warwick are running several workshops in the Autumn term to support you to develop the study skills necessary to succeed in your masters degree. Among other workshops offered will be specific CIM workshops concerning academic reading, academic writing, and correct referencing. You are welcome to attend any or all of the workshops, and we encourage all students to attend the full range of workshops offered by the centre, irrespective of their academic background. Please note that the plagiarism workshop in week 5 is mandatory for all students and an attendance register will be taken. 

This module introduces an interdisciplinary group of students to some of the main quantitative and computational approaches for modeling complex social systems. You will be introduced to a range of methodological approaches from across disciplines. 

For further information please contact cim@warwick.ac.uk.

In the era of networks, big data and the digital turn, traditional objects, such as documents, pictures, data, groups, events or patterns, open up to new methods of research. Emerging digital research methods also become means through which such objects are sustained, thus co-creating dynamic objects, such as networks, databases, platforms, data visualizations, maps and many other new forms of social, cultural and public life. This module offers an insight into these new and emerging societal and cultural entities and methodologies.

For further information please contact cim@warwick.ac.uk or go to https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/apply-to-study/cross-disciplinary-postgraduate-modules/im904-digital-objects-digital-methods/

The CIM Masters dissertation is a piece of work (10,000 words) which addresses a single subject of your choice. The topic may concern any aspect of the subject matter of their programme. The dissertation is an exercise in independent study in which you pursue a topic that interests you. It allows you to further develop your skills of literature search and bibliography construction, theoretical argument, generation and appraisal of empirical evidence.

For further information please contact cim@warwick.ac.uk or go to https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/apply-to-study/cross-disciplinary-postgraduate-modules/im906-dissertation/

This module introduces the rapidly growing field of urban science with a focus on concepts and methods for understanding modern cities and the integration of emerging technologies in the urban space. It provides a broad and systematic exposure to a range of topics and methods on urban science with emphasis given to spatial analysis.

This is achieved through the combination of three inter-related components:

1. theoretical foundations of urban science;

2. a methodological approach to the urban space with emphasis to theory and methods for spatial analysis; and

Cities have traditionally adapted to the raise of new technologies, like cars or telephones, for instance. Nowadays, digital technologies and data in particular are transforming the material, cultural, social and political spheres of the urban realm.

These transformations require new theories and research methods to understand the spaces, scales, and agents involved in the relationships between data and the urban. This module offers an insight into some of these current theories and methodologies, to question the notion of data itself, to challenge controversial notions like the smart city, and to expand the realms of inquiry of urban data.

For further information please contact cim@warwick.ac.uk or go to https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/apply-to-study/cross-disciplinary-postgraduate-modules/im919-urban-data/

Visualisations have become a fundamental currency for the exploration of data and the exchange of information. In this module we will explore this highly interdisciplinary subject from a wide variety of views - from cartography to statistics, to architecture and information design, and from science to the arts. Some of the labs and activities will involve coding and sketching activities, but there are no pre-requisites for this course. We encourage students from diverse backgrounds to bring their own perspective and skills to this exciting and interdisciplinary topic.

For further information please contact cim@warwick.ac.uk or go to https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/apply-to-study/cross-disciplinary-postgraduate-modules/im921-visualisation/

This module serves as an interdisciplinary introduction to contemporary machine learning research and applications, specifically focusing on the techniques of deep learning which use convolutional and/or recurrent neural network structures to both recognize and generate content from image, text, signals, sound, speech, and other forms of predominantly unstructured data. Using a combination of theoretical/conceptual/historical analysis and practical programming projects in the R programming language, the module will teach both the basic application of these techniques while also conveying the historical origins and ethical implications of such applications.

For further information please contact cim@warwick.ac.uk or go to  https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/apply-to-study/cross-disciplinary-postgraduate-modules/im931-interdisciplinary-approaches-to-machine-learning/

Syllabus

Week 1: Art, media, and activism—how we got to today (lecture and seminar)

Sets the scene through a brief history of art- and media-activist practices leading up to today, examining the impact of social and technological change; also looks at the impact of networks on art’s autonomy, and the relation between theory and practice, as well as the specificity of the digital as a medium

Week 2: Capital, labour, and value in a digital age (lecture and seminar)

Looks at the ways contemporary political economy has been theorized, together with the possibilities and difficulties that communicative capital poses for organising, popular resistance, and subversive artistic praxis

Week 3: Tactical media, performance, design (lecture and seminar)

Looks at a variety of critical and aesthetic interventions, including electronic civil disobedience, DOS attacks, cybersquatting, Floodnet applications, tactical cartography and visualization, and so forth; also looks at the media activism as performance and aesthetic practice the role of art and design in critical media interventions, especially the role of speculative design fiction

Week 4: The Twitter Revolution (lecture and seminar)

Looks at the role of social media activism in protests and unrest in Moldova, Iran, and the Arab spring examining the relation between twitter and the streets, and the limits and possibilities of digital participation

Week 5: Media squares (lecture and seminar)

Looks at technologies of communication and participation in the Occupy, 15-M and Nuit Debout movements, examining the relation between digital and real-world organising, as well as connections between smart mobs and DIY artistic production

Week 7: Designing media activism (workshop)

In-class crits with pecha kucha presentations of group design projects

Week 8: Digital populisms and far-right co-options (lecture and seminar)—with visiting speaker Dr Paolo Gerbaudo (KCL)

Looks at the use of digital strategies by populist movements today, such as the gilets jaunes, and at the appropriation of critical and tactical-media approaches by the far right, evaluating the political ramifications of these developments for the theory and practice of media activism

Week 9: Digital parties and democratic reformations (lecture and seminar)

Looks at how digital technologies are transforming democratic forms and institutions, with a focus on the potential for social media to reconfigure representation and the relation between leader and base, and on how big data is changing campaigning

Week 10: Whither media activism? (workshop)

A hands-on exploration of online interventions, micropractices, and design fictions that speculate about or advocate for digital futures.

For further information please contact cim@warwick.ac.uk or visit https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/apply-to-study/cross-disciplinary-postgraduate-modules/im933-media-activism/

This transdisciplinary module aims to develop students’ theoretical, methodological and creative skills to respond ecologically to the pressing environmental challenges faced by contemporary societies. Students will learn through examples and cases to draw connections between the ways in which a range of disciplines and practices are integrating the challenge to think and act ecologically. Drawing upon the earth, environmental, social sciences and humanities, science and technology studies, feminist studies, critical theory and political ecology, art and design, the module will encourage students to reflect critically on the diverse meanings taken by ecological thinking in their own social, disciplinary and professional contexts and on how different approaches to ecological futures relate to each other.