Once your Major Subject has been confirmed, the Faculty Office will ask you to state your preferred Minor Subject by 1st Sept. Some Minor Subjects have limited places, and if these are over-subscribed the departments concerned will select their own students.
On this page you will find information to help you choose your Minor Subject:
- The list of departments offering Minor Subjects in 2018-19 with outward links
- A short description of each Minor Subject
- Contact details for Minor Subjects
Departments offering BBS Minor Subjects
Click on the tiles below to visit corresponding departmental webpages
Minor Subjects short descriptionThe links below are, when possible, specific to a given Minor subject. |
|
| Paper | Short Description (see links for more detailed information) |
|---|---|
| 103 - Health and Disease in Anthropological Perspective |
This paper selectively explores means to characterize health patterns of different populations, from the archaeologically recovered and historically documented past, remote and otherwise, up to the present day. Thus the paper investigates how disease has shaped the way humans have evolved, and how diseases have evolved to exploit humans. Contact hours: 32h Maximum 20 candidates |
| 104 - Human Evolution |
This course provides an in depth exploration of the evolutionary history of humans and hominins. The paper looks at human evolution from ca. 10 million years ago to 10,000 years ago. Contact hours: TBA Maximum 20 candidates |
| 105 - Human Ecology and Behaviour |
This paper examines human and other primate behaviour in a broad comparative perspective. Non-human primate social communication across all sense modalities will be reviewed in the context of the social organization of the various primate species. The paper will also consider what primate and human communication have in common, and will discuss the evolution of human language. Contact hours: 32h Maximum 20 candidates |
| 106 - Neural Degeneration and Regeneration |
Diseases and injuries of the human brain and spinal cord are tragically resistant to treatment. This lecture module investigates the cellular and molecular causes of these conditions, the reasons why regeneration does not take place, and the research now under way to permit regeneration therapies in the future. Contact hours: 24h Maximum 15 candidates |
| 107 - Philosophy & Ethics of Medicine |
Do we have a human right to health? What is it to be healthy anyway, and can good health be measured? How can we know that smoking causes lung cancer, rather than that they are merely correlated? Is it ethical to experiment on humans to gain that knowledge? Is the foetus a person, and does this affect the morality of abortion? How should we decide between funding basic science and applied studies? Medical practice raises significant philosophical, ethical and political questions. This course studies these questions and shows how different answers may influence practice. Contact hours: 27.5h Maximum 50 candidates |
| 108 - Health, Medicine and Society | This paper provides students with a critical survey of principal themes and debates in contemporary medical sociology. It explores the major social causes of health and illness in modern societies, with special reference to such factors as social class, gender, ethnicity, and age; provides students with a sociological grasp of the issues and problems associated with chronic illness; investigates a variety of key topics in the sociology of mental health; and, finally, develops a sociological analysis of the major organisational, professional and technological components of medical practice in contemporary society. Contact hours: 20h |
| 109 - The Family |
Psychological and sociological perspectives on family relationships, kinship and child development are examined in relation to specific topics such as motherhood, fatherhood, adolescence, marriage and divorce, single-parent and step-families, lesbian and gay families, and families created by assisted reproduction. Contact hours: 32h Limited spaces |
| 111 - Central Mechanisms of Reward, Punishment and Emotion |
How does the brain process reward and punishment and how does this help us understand emotions and their dysregulation? Themes discussed in this module include: the varied functions of reward, the pathological mechanisms underlying a loss of pleasure, the reward circuitry underlying social behaviour and social cognition, the mechanisms by which punishing stimuli impact on our motivations and emotions, the dysregulation of these circuits in psychiatric disorders, and the interplay between cognition and emotion. Contact hours: 24h Maximum 15 candidates |
| 113 - Early Medicine |
This paper covers medical knowledge and practices in the medieval and early modern periods. Themes include tradition, innovation and the transmission of knowledge; the value of reason and experience; patient-practitioner relationships; gender and medicine; pluralism and the marketplace; understandings of the body and disease; medicine, magic and religion. Contact hours: 27.5h Maximum 12 candidates |
| 114 - Modern Medicine & Biomedical Sciences |
Born in hospitals, vaccinated, X-rayed, taking antibiotics, receiving transplants – medicine sets the parameters of our lives. Since a great deal of biology, chemistry and physics has been and continues to be done as part of medicine, it is also central to HPS. This paper is about how, and with what consequences, a new, scientific medicine was made for the modern world. The Michaelmas Term course surveys the creation since 1750 of new medical institutions, professionals and practices. The Lent Term course explores the 20th-century transformation of medicine into a major object of economic, political and ethical concern. Contact hours: 27.5h Maximum 12 candidates |
|
Not available from 2019-20 onwards |
You will be encouraged to gain a critical understanding of cognitive, social, emotional and sociocultural psychology, from the perspectives of human development, social relationships, classroom learning and wider educational systems. We focus on areas that are debated within psychology itself as well as presenting challenges for education and for society at large. Contact hours: 32h Maximum 10 candidates |
|
Not available from 2019-20 onwards |
The lectures will examine the intersectional politics of difference, and the spatial and family dimensions of educational inequalities. Students taking this paper will gain an informed sociological understanding of national and international developments in key areas of educational politics, policy and public debate. Contact hours: 32h |
|
Not available from 2019-20 onwards |
The Philosophy of Education course develops those areas of philosophy that are crucially relevant to our understanding of education. It is split into five areas: Conservatism and Education, Epistemology and Education, Liberalism and Liberal Education, Pragmatism and Education, Postmodernism and Education. Contact hours: 32h |
|
Not available from 2019-20 onwards |
Images, texts and Identities: Education and Social Changes 1914-1991. This paper is divided into four sections: Context and Approaches; 1919-1959: The Age of Extremes; Oral History, Memory and Educational Lives; and Cultural Histories: Representing the Body of the School Teacher and the School Child. Contact hours: 32h |
| 119 - Plant and Microbial Genetics | The course will provide an introduction to microbial pathogenesis; topics will include a description of approaches used to identify virulence factors, discussion of bacterial genome dynamics and classification of the virulence factors of pathogenic bacteria. We then move on to the genetics of higher plants, including conventional, molecular plant genetics. Contact hours: 26h |
| 120 - Human Genetics, Genomics & Systems Biology | Human genetics has always had to exploit technology to obtain answers to the problems it poses. The module explores how we can use information from the Human Genome Project, together with methods for analysing gene expression and function at the whole-genome scale (Systems Biology) to improve our understanding of human biology. Contact hours: 26h |
| 121 - Evolutionary Genetics | This module will consider the process of evolution, by looking at studies on genetic variation in populations, together with theoretical examinations of the way that genes behave in populations. Contact hours: 26h |
| 122 - EnterpriseTECH |
Students work in teams to prepare a commercial feasibility report and present the findings to the inventors. Supervision and support is provided which covers topics such as opportunity evaluation, developing business concepts and making presentations. Contact hours: 27h If you wish to take the BBS EnterpriseTECH Minor subject, you must register online by 1st Sept on the EnterpriseTECH website and please make sure you select "EnterpriseTECH UG|Deadline: 23 Nov 2018" even though, as a BBS student, you need to apply by 1st Sept. General information about EnterpriseTECH Maximum 25 candidates |
| 123 - Development and Psychopathology |
This paper provides an overview of common problems of psychopathology in childhood, including pre and postnatal influences on child development, internalizing problems and externalizing problems, and the influence of children's close relationships on the development of problems. Contact hours: 32h Limited spaces |
| 124 - Psychology and Social Issues |
This paper explores a range of issues that are of considerable social consequence from a social and developmental psychological perspective, such as policy issues concerning children, mental health problems, learning difficulties and the transition to parenthood. Contact hours: 32h Limited spaces |
| 125 - Gender Development: Biological, Psychological and Clinical Perspectives |
This paper examines a range of perspectives on the causes and consequences of sex differences in human behaviour, as well as of within sex variability in gender-related behaviour. That is, not only why do males and females differ in some respects, but also why is the behaviour of some individuals more sex-typical than that of others? Contact hours: 32h Limited spaces |
|
126 - Exploring Music Psychology Now available for 2018-19 |
What are the factors that affect our perception and production of music and how can these be studied? What is music’s role in health and therapy? These questions are at the heart of the wide-ranging field of music psychology and form the basis of this course. Contact hours: 16h Maximum 3 candidates - candidates must demonstrate some musical knowledge to be permitted to study this option |
| 127 - Conservation Science | This interdepartmental course, taught by the Departments of Zoology and Plant Sciences, aims to provide an understanding of why wild nature is currently in decline, why this matters, and how biology coupled with other disciplines can be harnessed to identify potential solutions. Contact hours: 27h |
| 128 - Bioinformatics |
The NST Part II BBS Bioinformatics will provide an introduction to the field of bioinformatics, focusing on bioinformatics applications related to the study of complex disease genetics and the recent advances made in this field since the introduction of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies. Contact hours: 32h Maximum 46 candidates |
| 129 - General Practice and Primary Care Research |
The aim of this module is to provide students with knowledge, skills and practical experience to understand the importance and challenges of GP and Primary Care research and to offer a platform for developing further expertise in it during their clinical studies and beyond. Contact hours: 34.5h Maximum 8 candidates - Selection criteria |
| New for 2018-19 |
This course introduces the history and evolution of non-mammalian vertebrates, emphasising questions that are the subject of current debate and controversy. We integrate studies of fossil and living vertebrates to examine major events in evolution. An important component of the course is the demonstration practicals, which give "hands-on" experience of actual fossil material, including some type and figured specimens. Contact hours 48h |
| New for 2018-19 |
These lectures place a strong emphasis on understanding the neural mechanisms underlying behaviour. Within this module we explore how nervous systems are organised, how animals gather and process information about the environment, and how they generate the motor activity underlying their behaviour. Contact hours: 24h |
|
132 - Mammalian Evolution and Faunal History New for 2018-19 |
This course is similar in approach to the Michaelmas Term 'Topics in Vertebrate Evolution', but we make sure that it is possible to take 'Mammalian Evolution' without having done its Michaelmas Term relative. The course aims to familiarise you with the comparative morphology and functional biology, modes of life, distribution, evolutionary relationships and systematics of living and fossil mammals and their antecedents. Throughout, we attempt a synthesis of group-based and topic-based treatments. Lectures are backed-up by demonstration practical classes, which reinforce and illustrate topics of central importance in the lectures. Contact hours: 40h |
|
133 - Genetics, Development and Animal Diversity New for 2018-19 |
This course lies at the interface of whole organism biology and molecular genetics. We look at how genomes themselves evolve, and also at how genome can inform whole organism biology. Recent advances in sequencing technology mean that genomic approaches are no longer limited to a few model species, but instead can be applied in many organisms of evolutionary or ecological interest. Contact hours: 24h |
| New for 2018-19 |
This BBS minor subject comprises Module B from the Part II Biochemistry course. This course examines all steps in eukaryotic gene expression, from chromatin accessibility through to translation and mRNA turnover. Particular emphasis is paid to: regulation of gene expression, the co-transcriptional nature of RNA processing, functional coupling between different steps in gene expression, the impact of global and “systems” level approaches to understanding gene expression. |
|
135 – Cell Cycle, Signalling and Cancer New for 2018-19 |
This BBS minor subject comprises Module D from the Part II Biochemistry course. The themes of this course draw on most modern biological techniques and impinge on core cell and molecular biology topics of cellular signalling, DNA replication, DNA repair, cell cycle and apoptosis amongst others. There is a particular emphasis on cancer biology and therapeutic intervention with lectures on oncogenes and tumour suppressors, experimental systems, tumour metabolism and imaging, virology and therapeutic strategies. |