Masterclasses

Masterclasses are online, subject-specific, hour-long sessions for students in Year 12. Sessions run weekly on Tuesday and Thursday (4-5pm) from January to April in 2024. Applications are now closed.

About Masterclasses

Applications for Masterclasses 2024 are now closed.

Masterclasses are online, subject-specific, hour-long sessions for students in Year 12 to get a taste of university. Masterclasses will introduce you to subjects available at UCL in 2024. The hour-long sessions will feature a lecture on a specific topic from UCL academics and PhD students.

This year, Masterclasses will be online. The sessions are interactive, and we encourage you to engage with the presenters, as there is an opportunity at the end to ask questions about the topic presented.

In the Subjects section of this page you can find out more about the topics covered, who is presenting the session, and the date of the Masterclass.

Please note, Masterclasses will not be recorded.

Subjects

Please find below the subjects for the Masterclasses sessions running in 2024.

January

History of Art

Topic: History of Art: Is it All Old Masters?

Presenter: Cora Chalaby

Date: Thursday 18 January 2024, 4 - 5pm

The History of Art programme at UCL encourages you to see the world differently. This Masterclass will respond to the prompt "History of Art: Is it All Old Masters?" using the abstract paintings of Alma Thomas, an African American woman artist working in the 1960s and 1970s, as a case study. The session will allow you to explore how diverse, interdisciplinary, and dynamic History of Art is as a subject.

Sustainable Built Environments, Energy and Resources

Topic: An Introduction to Sustainable Built Environments

Presenter: Dr Nahid Mohajeri

Date: Tuesday 23 January 2024, 4 - 5pm

The Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources trains future sustainability leaders. The Sustainable Built Environments, Energy and Resources (SBEER) degree is a unique and newly developed programme at the Bartlet. The programme tackles topics like climate change mitigation, and its effects on the built environment and humankind. This Masterclass will be an introduction to how this solution-orientated degree is taught at UCL, from both a social and environmental science perspective. You will discover how real sustainability challenges can be explored through the problem-solving tools provided by the SBEER programme.

Creative Arts and Humanities

Topic: Creative Writing, Film/Moving Image, and Performance

Presenter: Dr Kristin Smith

Date: Thursday 25 January 2024, 4 - 5pm

The Creative Arts and Humanities programme is a bold and exciting interdisciplinary undergraduate degree, uniquely bringing together creative writing, film and moving image, and performance, and is the first of its kind in the UK. In this Masterclass, you will be introduced to concepts from Year One of the degree to develop your critical understanding of these three modes. You will also take part in a taster workshop to develop your own creative skills.

English

Topic: An Introduction to Linguistics

Presenter: Dr Beth Malory

Date: Tuesday 30 January 2024, 4 - 5pm

The Department of English Language and Literature at UCL is of the most enduring and respected in Britain. This Masterclass will provide students with a linguistic toolkit for approaching literary texts and to assist with your close reading skills. The session will also give you an insight into the range of linguistic topics that are covered at undergraduate level.

February

Medicine

Topic: An Introduction to Studying Medicine

Presenter: Dr Sarah Bennett and Dr Lois Haruna-Cooper

Date: Tuesday 06 February 2024, 4 - 5pm

UCL has educated doctors since 1834. Working closely with several major teaching hospitals, it provides a truly world class medical education. In this Masterclass, you will hear from a doctor about their career journey. You will also discover more about the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) programme at UCL. The session will also include an outline of the medicine application process, and tips for preparing to apply.

Chemical Engineering

Topic: Nature-Inspired Chemical Engineering: A NICE Approach to Sustainable Development

Presenter: Prof Marc-Olivier Coppens

Date: Thursday 08 February 2024, 4 - 5pm

This Masterclass will cover the systematic, Nature-Inspired Solution (NIS) methodology as a pathway to innovation. You will discover how we learn from trees, lungs, kidneys, and dunes to transform chemical and energy processes, from fluid mixing to catalysts for efficient, cleaner manufacturing, hydrogen fuel cells, and durable membranes for water treatment and bio-separations. NICE is also an avenue to discover materials for biomedicine, the built environment, and even technology to preserve water for space missions.

Statistics

Topic: An Introduction to Game Theory

Presenter: Dr Alexander Watson

Date: Tuesday 13 February 2024, 4 - 5pm

When you play a game with other people, you need to think not only about what is likely to be a successful strategy under the rules, but also how other people will decide to act. How do we imagine that others will respond to a guessing game, and how accurate are those mental models? In this Masterclass, we will play some games ourselves, talk about the mathematical questions that underlie this situation, and dive into a statistical investigation of the area.

Population Health Sciences

Topic: Population Health Sciences: a UK Perspective

Presenter: Alison Moody

Date: Thursday 15 February 2024, 4 - 5pm

How healthy are we as a society? How do we define “healthy”? How and why does health vary between different population groups? This session will explore population health sciences from a UK perspective. We will examine changes in population health over time, and the differences in health experienced by different groups. We will seek to understand why, if you took the Jubilee line from Westminster to Canning Town, local life expectancy would decrease by one year for every two stations you passed.

Science and Engineering for Social Change

Topic: Solving the Complex Challenges Puzzle: a Multi-Disciplinary Perspective

Presenter: Dr Irina Lazar and Dr Elisa Randazzo

Date: Tuesday 20 February 2024, 4 - 5pm

We often hear that modern societies are currently facing complex global challenges, which trespass boarders and are not easy to solve or even tackle. But what are the most pressing problems? How do we identify them and whose job is it to try to solve them? In this Masterclass, we will explore how science and engineering can help address these challenges when combined with the social sciences and public policy. We will bring in the Sustainable Development Goals framework of the United Nations and explore the topic from an interactive and multidisciplinary perspective. Tackling complex issues from multiple angles ensures that we can produce technologically-sound sustainable solutions that are equitable and can be implemented on a large scale in society.

Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR)

Topic: How Could Space Exploration Benefit Life on Earth?

Presenter: Myles Harris

Date: Thursday 22 February 2024, 4 - 5pm

IRDR aims to achieve leadership in risk and disaster reduction and emergency response both in the UK and internationally. This IRDR Masterclass will ask: How could space exploration benefit life on Earth? A new space age has begun. The global exploration roadmap has brought together national space agency to bring humankind to Mars by 2050. To get there, we must overcome enormous challenges and risks – isolation and confinement during spaceflight, muscle, and bone density wastage, and providing healthcare with no option of evacuation to a hospital. However, some argue that the money spent on space exploration is better spent on Earth. In this Masterclass, you will discover how space exploration can benefit life on Earth and what research is currently being done to bring humankind to Mars safely.

Sport and Exercise Medical Sciences

Topic: An Introduction to Sport and Exercise Medical Sciences

Presenter: Joseph Warwick

Date: Tuesday 27 February 2024, 4 - 5pm

This Masterclass will give you a snap shot of what you can study across the second and third year of the Sport and Exercise Medical Sciences programme (SEM). The session will help you to understand key components from the multidisciplinary team that are involved in SEM. Whether you want to be a physiotherapist, doctor, sport scientist, or strength and conditioning coach, this degree will set your career up with the best foundational platform to excel in your chosen field.

Cancer Institute

Topic: Cancer Research: Past, Present, and Future

Presenter: Callum Oddy

Date: Thursday 29 February 2024, 4 - 5pm

The UCL Cancer Institute is the hub for cancer research at UCL. This Masterclass will highlight how scientific research is being used to fight back against cancer. You will consider cancer from a historical context, and then we will examine modern definitions, including the types of cancer and who may be diagnosed. We also discuss how research can be used to stop cancer’s ability to endlessly proliferate, using real scientific examples. Finally, we will consider how much more work is still needed in this area; however, there is still hope.

You might also be interested in our Cancer Institute Taster Day in February 2024.

March

Economics

Topic: 40 Years of Economics: a Global Perspective

Presenter: Dr Ramin Nassehi

Date: Tuesday 05 March 2024, 4 - 5pm

In this Masterclass, you will learn about the economic story of the world over the past 40 years. You will look at interactive data to help you answer the following questions: Which technologies have the most improvements to our standard of living in the last four decades? Who have been the main winners and losers of automation and globalisation since the 1980s? What has happened to the income gap between rich and developing countries in the past 40 years? And what has happened to the gap between rich and poor within these countries?

Sociology

Topic: Sociology and Food

Presenter: Dr Sonya Sharma

Date: Thursday 07 March 2024, 4 - 5pm

This Masterclass will foreground the study of sociology through food. This interactive session will explore how food can be a fascinating way to examine current social issues related to the environment, health and wellbeing, the intersections of class, gender, and ethnicity, and belonging and connection.

Geography

Topic: Human Geography: Space and Society

Presenter: Dr James Kneale

Date: Tuesday 12 March 2024, 4 - 5pm

The UCL Department of Geography is a world-renowned centre for education, research, and public engagement. Their programmes tackle global challenges, giving students the skills to make a positive impact. This Masterclass will be an introduction to how human geography is taught at UCL, using geographical scholarship to help explain, understand, and critically analyse the relationships between space and society. You will be encouraged to grasp and analyse the ways that spatial and social processes are always entwined.

Political Science

Topic: What is freedom?

Presenter: Dr John Filling

Date: Thursday 14 March 2024, 4 - 5pm

UCL’s Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy offers a uniquely stimulating environment for the study of all fields of politics. This Masterclass will provide an overview of what it’s like to study Politics, and related areas such as Philosophy, at a university like UCL. The session will focus on key concepts in politics, like freedom, and we will ask key questions such as: What does freedom mean? What threatens our freedom? And are we entitled to more freedom?

Law

Topic: Contract Law: Mistake and Misrepresentation

Presenter: Dr Niamh Connolly

Date: Tuesday 19 March 2024, 4 - 5pm

UCL Laws is a law faculty for the world: a diverse and progressive community of researchers, students, leading academics and alumni embedded in a top, research-oriented university. In this Masterclass, you will be learn about the key doctrines of contract law. Contract law is a compulsory module on the first year of the Law LLB (Latin Legum Baccalaureus) degree.

School of Management

Topic: An Introduction to Strategy

Presenter: Dr Maya Cara

Date: Thursday 21 March 2024, 4 - 5pm

This Masterclass will give you an introduction to the essence of strategy in business. You will delve into the foundational concepts of strategic management, looking at the importance of goal, mission, and values. You will learn about strategy formulation by understanding both the internal and external business environment, and how to make strategic choices at corporate, business, and operational levels. The Masterclass will also explore strategy evaluations techniques, with a discussion about successful strategy examples.

History

Topic: History as a Discipline

Presenter: Dr Emily Corran

Date: Tuesday 26 March 2024, 4 - 5pm

The UCL History department, which dates back at 1830, is one of the best in the world for history research and teaching. The History Masterclass will invite you to think about history as a discipline. We will discuss examples of innovative research currently taking place in UCL’s History department, and we will ask: What is history? What do historians really do, and what makes us different from other disciplines in the social sciences?

April

Philosophy

Topic: Gorgias' Encomium of Helen

Presenter: Dr Merrick Anderson

Date: Tuesday 09 April 2024, 4 - 5pm

This Masterclass will focus on Gorgias' Encomium of Helen (a text that was likely composed in the late 5th Century BCE). The piece contains the first complete valid deductive argument of any philosophical text. It also addresses still-relevant issues about moral responsibility. In this interactive session, you will learn how to argue effectively and be challenged to think hard about why and when we hold people responsible.

Computer Science

Topic: Graphics, VR/AR, and AI

Presenter: Ahmet Hamdi Güzel

Date: Thursday 11 April 2024, 4 - 5pm

In this Masterclass, you will dive into the fascinating world of Computer Graphics, VR/AR Displays, and their conjunction with AI. You will explore how these technologies allow us to interact with digital elements blended into our real world or immerse us entirely in a computer-generated environment. You will investigate Computer Generated Holography, uncovering how we can create three-dimensional images that appear as if they are floating in mid-air by computing the light's behaviour. You will also discover how AI techniques can help researchers advance these technologies.

Mathematics

Topic: An Introduction to Applied Mathematics

Presenter: Thomas Caussade Strauszer

Date: Tuesday 16 April 2024, 4 - 5pm

The Mathematics Department at UCL is highly regarded, being one of the founding departments of UCL established in 1826. In this Masterclass, we will look at applied mathematics. In this topic, we are often led to models where finding an exact solution to the problem can be difficult to achieve. However, a good numerical approximation is very useful for most practical purposes. We will discuss different techniques to numerically solve a variety of equations where an explicit solution cannot be found, such as the bisection method, the secant method, and fixed-point iteration methods.

Education, Society and Culture

Topic: Nonsense and Knowledge: Finding Our Way in a Confusing World

Presenter: Dr JD Carpentieri

Date: Thursday 18 April 2024, 4 - 5pm

The world is full of misinformation, misdirection and outright lies. There is a lot of genuinely useful knowledge out there, but in a world of information overload it can be almost impossible to separate that knowledge from nonsense. In this session, we will discuss misinformation, both online and in the broader world. Who produces this misinformation and why? What are their strategies for fooling us? And why are we more easily fooled than we might want to admit? In this interactive, university-lecture style Masterclass, we will also look at strategies for identifying and avoiding nonsense in our pursuit of genuine knowledge. In doing so, we will consider questions such as: When should we rely on common sense and when should it be avoided? How do governments use statistics to mislead us? Do your parents really know what they’re talking about? And (perhaps most importantly) can you really trust university rankings?

Eligibility

All eligible applicants who meet at least one of the shortlisting criteria specified in points 2 to 6 on the Who we work with webpage will be offered a place on this programme.

Apply