Postgraduate Course: Inclusive Society (EFIE11455)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | *Programme Core Course: Data, Inequality and Society (MSc)*
Please Note:
This course is only available to students enrolled on the Data, Inequality and Society (MSc) degree programme.
Socio-economic inequalities are at the forefront of public debate. Around the world, from Zimbabwe to France and from Chile to India, civil unrest echoes the dissatisfaction of growing sections of the population with the relative reduction of their economic, political, and social capitals. The focus of this course is, however, on another side of the public response to inequalities that is often less visible and less reported. The course focusses on inclusive practices that seek to build fairer and more just societies. Through interaction with key scholarship and with practitioners who are leading projects of change, the course provides students with an opportunity to learn about the promise and the challenges associated with different approaches to creating more inclusive societies. |
| Course description |
Through the analysis of different types of data and using the conceptual toolbox developed by students in the first core course (Exclusion and Inequality), this course examines concrete examples of inclusive projects initiated by government, private sector, and civil society. It is organized around themes that are tied to different types and aspects of projects of inclusion. The exact themes are to be determined every year. Indicative themes are: (1) redistribution, (2) participation, (3) data activism, and (4) working with vulnerable groups.
The course is structured around four main elements.
First, the course organisers will provide lectures that introduce the themes, explore how we can analyse projects of inclusion, and examine the role of data in both generating and addressing inequalities.
Second, students will interact with an exciting range of practitioners who are leading projects of change in a different fields and locations. These conversations will help bring theory and practice together by grounding the course discussions in real, ongoing examples of projects of inclusion.
Third, students will work in groups to present research on a case study of a project of inclusion of their choosing. For each theme, indicative case studies are provided by the course conveners (e.g. universal basic income for redistribution, participatory municipal budgeting for citizen engagement, critical cartography for data activism) to help students with exploring and analysing efforts to reduce inequalities and exclusion in the world.
Finally, the course makes use of a range of discussion-based activities to help integrate and consolidate learning from across the different themes and elements of the course.
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - Hybrid Course Delivery Information:
The Edinburgh Futures Institute delivers many of its courses in hybrid mode. This means that you may have some online students joining sessions for this course. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities.
Students should be aware that:
- Classrooms used in this course will have additional technology in place: in some cases, students might not be able to sit in areas away from microphones or outside the field of view of all cameras.
- All presentations, and whole class discussions will be recorded (see the Lecture Recording and Virtual Classroom policies for more details).
- You will need access to a personal computing device for this course. Most activities will take place in a web browser, unless otherwise stated. We recommend using a device with a screen, physical keyboard, and internet access.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 10,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 6,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 4,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
The course will be assessed by means of the following components:
1) Final Artefact (100%)
Artefact that reflects on key considerations for designing/implementing a project of inclusion.
The artefact may be:
- Text only (2,500-3,000 words).
- Multimodal output (video, visualisation, code, website etc.) plus explanatory text (1,000-1,500 words).
- Substantive creative output (crafted artefact, performance, substantial digital artefact) plus explanatory text (500-1,000 words). |
| Feedback |
Feedback on any formative assessment may be provided in various formats, for example, to include written, oral, video, face-to-face, whole class, or individual. The Course Organiser will decide which format is most appropriate in relation to the nature of the assessment.
Feedback on both formative and summative in-course assessed work will be provided in time to be of use in subsequent assessments within the course.
Feedback on the summative assessment(s) will be provided in written form via Learn, the University of Edinburgh's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
Formative Feedback Opportunity:
Formative feedback is ongoing feedback which monitors learning and is intended to improve performance in the same course, in future courses, and also beyond study.
Students will have the opportunity to share their understanding of some of the core material on an online space in the first phase of the course, feedback will be provided by peers and tutors and course convenors.
The group work will provide another chance for the course conveners to offer feedback and guidance to the students before they engage with the practitioner. Feedback will focus on conceptual clarity, as well as the understanding of the different ways in which inequalities and inclusion can be represented and shared (thereby directly preparing the students for the final assessment). |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate a critical understanding of some of the main solutions put forward to tackle inequalities and foster inclusion.
- Evidence an in-depth understanding of how to apply a conceptual and empirical toolbox to analyse, assess, and develop inclusive practices in context.
- Exhibit fluency in key data analysis strategies/approaches that are used to identify inequality and develop inclusive practices.
- Recognise the role and potential of data to recognise, describe, and facilitate inclusive initiatives.
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Reading List
Escobar, Arturo. 2017. Response: Design for/by [and from] the 'global South'. Design Philosophy Papers, 15(1), 39-49.
Gray, J., D. Lämmerhirt, & L. Bounegru. 2016. 'Changing what counts: how can citizen-generated and civil society data be used as an advocacy tool to change official data collection?' https://dx.doi.org/10/2139/ssrn.2742871.
Morgan, L.M. 2001. Community participation in health: perpetual allure, persistent challenge. Health policy and planning, 16(3): 221-230.
Tienda, M. 2013. Diversity/ inclusion: Promoting integration in higher education. Educational Researcher, 42(9): 467-475.
Tondani, D. 2009. Universal basic income and negative income tax: Two different ways of thinking redistribution. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 38(2): 246-255. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Inclusion,Social Justice,Data Justice,Data for Good,Data Activism,Social Enterprise |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Ian Russell
Tel:
Email: irussell@exseed.ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr David Murphy
Tel:
Email: dmurphy7@ed.ac.uk |
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