Prof Lee Edwards

This course is available on the BA in Social Anthropology and BSc in Social Anthropology. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course is not available to General Course students.

The course is open to final-year students from all LSE programmes and departments. It offers you an opportunity to develop knowledge and expertise in media and communications, combining this with your passion for your subject and your personal interests, to deliver a ‘Showcase Portfolio’ that encapsulates your learning journey during your time at LSE and provides a framework for continued analysis and reflection through your personal and professional life.

The Portfolio is an outward-facing, reflective exercise, allowing students to creatively communicate their LSE education and experience at the end of their time with the School. It is also an intellectual exercise: you will receive lectures and participate in seminars focused on media and communications theory and practice, to ensure you understand the social, political and cultural impact of media and communication on the world around us and its role as a powerful mode of public engagement and knowledge creation. This knowledge will also help you to understand how the ways industries associated with your ‘home’ discipline (e.g. the financial industry, the policy sector, the international development sector, the climate adaptation indusry) are narrated, justified and understood as a result of the way they communicate, and the way media represent them.

During the course, you will focus on the development of a holistic approach to personal, academic and professional skills, identifying links between your disciplinary studies, your personal and professional development, and your changing roles as individuals, students and emerging professionals as you progress through your studies. This development will be facilitated through seminar discussions, study group tasks, and through the individual tutoring that you receive specifically related to their portfolio development.

The course content will enable you not only to develop a Portfolio strategy that adopts the most appropriate mode of communication for your idea, but also to understand and reflect upon the potential impact of your own project on the audiences you reach. Alongside the lectures and seminars, you will receive individual tutorials to support the development of your specific Portfolio, and will have access to a range of support for skills development (e.g. from LSE Life, Digital Skills Lab, LSE Careers Service).

The course runs throughout the year. In MT, the Media and Communications framework content is delivered. In LT, students will work on their Portfolios in conjunction with an assigned tutor. In ST the portfolio will be submitted and assessed, and a public exhibition held.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the MT. 2 hours of workshops and 2 hours and 30 minutes of help sessions in the LT.

In MT the course will adopt the standard model of 2 hours contact time per week, one hour lecture, and one hour seminar, delivered as a single block rather than in separate sessions. 

In LT you will have regular weekly meetings with your individual tutor to support the development of your portfolio. In addition, one two-hour block session will be held in week 7 with the course leader and the teaching fellow, where you can seek advice about your draft portfolio (to be submitted in week 8). Office hours will be available as normal for all staff teaching on the course, for you to use as required.

No lectures, seminars or tutorials will take place in reading week (Week 6).

The fortnightly reflective tasks in MT will provide students with an opportunity to reflect on how their current experience relates to learning outcomes, how this will shape the portfolio and what skills are required to develop the portfolio. Further formative feedback on the developing portfolio in LT weeks 1, 3 ,5, and 7 will help the student further develop the draft portfolio to be submitted in LT Week 8.

In addition, during MT students will be set weekly tasks focused on the course readings for discussion in the seminars.

To be determined.

Portfolio (100%).

• LT, Week 1 (summative 20%)

• ST, Week 1 (summative 80%)