Social Sciences subject taster workshops

This engaging session will introduce students to the fundamental principles of business ethics, examining how companies navigate decisions that impact society, the environment, and key stakeholders.

We will explore essential topics such as shareholder vs. stakeholder theory, corporate responsibility, and ethical decision-making.

Through interactive discussions and hands-on activities, students will analyse real-world business practices, assess ethical dilemmas, and develop a deeper understanding of responsible decision-making in the business world.

This session provides an in-depth examination of the economic, political, and strategic dimensions of technological leadership, highlighting key drivers such as foreign direct investment (FDI), research and development (R&D), and the rise of techno-nationalism.

Through real-world case studies and interactive discussion, you will explore how these forces shape industries, influence policymaking, and impact international relations. Designed for students considering future pathways in business, technology, or global affairs, this session illuminates the complex factors that underpin a rapidly evolving world.

This interactive academic taster session explores the question “Can education change lives?” by examining learning and opportunity from a global perspective. Through a range of engaging activities, students will work with real-world examples, including images and short case studies of young people from different countries, to explore how access to education can be shaped by factors such as poverty, gender, family support, and location. 

Students will take part in group discussions and collaborative tasks that encourage them to identify barriers to education, consider possible solutions, and recognise patterns across different global contexts. The session introduces students to key ideas and approaches used in Education and Social Science subjects at university, including analysing case studies, using evidence, and applying concepts to real-life situations. 

By the end of the session, students will have a clearer understanding of what studying Education or Social Sciences at university involves, how these subjects connect to real-world issues, and how education can influence future opportunities and career pathways. 

Step into the role of an Earth Detective! This interactive workshop brings geology to life through hands-on activities and a real-world twist. Students will explore how rocks and soils form, what makes them unique, and how minerals and textures reveal the story of our planet.  

Using high-quality images, they will classify rocks and link them to the soils they produce. They will also interpret geological maps—building skills in observation and critical thinking. To make learning exciting, we’ll add a forensic twist: can they use rock and soil clues to solve a mystery and pinpoint a suspect’s location? This session benefits teachers by enriching Earth Science topics with practical, inquiry-based activities that promote observation, teamwork, and problem-solving.  

It’s a dynamic way to connect classroom theory to real-world applications in geology, environmental science, archaeology, and forensics—while sparking curiosity and engagement in your students. 

This engaging, curriculum-linked workshop invites students to uncover the hidden physics and climate importance of clouds. Blending atmospheric science with cultural perspectives, the session introduces how different types of clouds form, why supercooled water can exist far below 0°C, and how tiny ice-nucleating particles shape cloud behaviour, weather, and climate. 

Designed for Year 12 but easily adaptable across age groups, the workshop emphasises active learning through paired challenges, group problem-solving, and live interactive demonstrations. Students explore real-world issues such as cloud-climate feedbacks and the ethics of climate intervention, building skills in critical thinking, evidence-based reasoning, and scientific communication. 

This workshop illuminates key topics in weather, climate, and atmospheric processes, offering a fresh way to deepen students’ understanding of a complex and highly relevant area of environmental science. 

In this session, students will explore the ways many of the social, environmental, and economic issues their generation faces today and in the future – like inequality, climate change, housing shortages, etc - are interconnected. It will teach students about how achieving social, environmental and economic sustainability requires us to recognize the interconnectedness of the problems we face. 

During the session, students will create their own eco-social (economic/environmental and social) policy toolboxes in an exciting and informative playing card-based activity. This activity will teach them about how eco-social policies – such as working time reduction, community gardens, and wealth taxes – can be paired together to best address problems and achieve sustainability.  

This session will support students to develop their problem solving and analytical skills, decision making, and critical thinking skills, whilst teaching them to conceptualise the everyday problems they might hear about and encounter as sustainability problems. 

2 billion people worldwide are dependent on mountain glaciers. Glaciers in high mountain regions are often called “Mountain Water Towers”, as they supply around 60% of global freshwater. This freshwater supports ecosystem services that are crucial to human life, such as safe drinking water and sanitation, irrigation for agriculture, hydropower, and tourism, whilst the landscape holds important cultural and spiritual significance for mountain communities. 

Climate change is rapidly increasing the rate of glacial retreat, causing irreparable changes to the landscape and water resource. The importance of glaciers has raised such concern that 2025 was declared the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation by the United Nations. 

In this workshop, students will engage with real-life, innovative, contemporary climate challenges, as a taster of glaciological research in higher education.  

The key question: how do different communities engage with their local Mountain Water Tower, and what challenges do they face due to climate change? 

This session will allow students to explore the compulsory topics and modules that they will cover if they study a Law LLB at university. From contract law to human rights law, participants will develop their understanding of the undergraduate course structure and begin to refine transferable skills and study strategies that will help them to succeed on the course.

This interactive workshop is aimed at KS5 students already studying Sociology and takes students inside a real, contested piece of sociological research to explore how sociologists actually decide what counts as valid, reliable and ethical evidence. Through group critique and debate, students engage directly with the methodological choices researchers face, and the consequences when those choices go wrong, moving beyond the textbook to real-life research.

This session offers a powerful way to bring Theory and Methods to life, turning one of the A-level specification's most heavily tested, and often driest, topics into a live, high-stakes debate. By revealing the real arguments and controversies behind sociological research, students gain a much sharper sense of how knowledge about society actually gets made, and the confidence to question it.

This interactive workshop invites students to uncover the hidden rules, patterns and inequalities that structure everyday educational life. Through a series of interactive activities, students will explore how social class, culture and expectations shape who thrives in education and life, and why. Drawing on key sociological thinkers, the session helps students see how education both reflects and reinforces wider social forces. 

This session offers a powerful way to support learners’ critical thinking, social awareness and confidence in discussing complex topics. By revealing the ‘invisible’ rules of school - from the hidden curriculum to everyday performances of identity - students gain insight into their own educational journeys and develop language to analyse them. The aim is simple: to show that the world is sociology, and once you see it, everything changes.

Discover how music, culture, and technology intersect in this interactive workshop exploring how personal experiences connect to wider social forces.

Dive into key sociological concepts, including C. Wright Mills’ “sociological imagination,” to analyse music consumption habits, stereotypes, and identity formation. Engage with contrasting theories, such as Adorno’s critique of the “Culture Industry” and Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding,” to debate how platforms like Spotify and YouTube influence cultural production and audience behaviour.

Through interactive polling, group discussions, and case studies, you’ll explore critical issues like user-generated content, big data profiling, and the power dynamics in digital media.

Ideal for students with varied academic interests, this workshop fosters critical thinking and analytical skills, offering valuable insights into how digital media shapes modern culture. Whether you're into Sociology, Media, or just love music, this session is for you!

Ideal for students from KS3 and KS4 who have never studied Sociology before,  this fully interactive taster session introduces sociology through discovery. Students move through a carousel of short, hands-on activities designed so that key sociological ideas, hidden social rules, culture, and what shapes identity, are found and experienced by the students themselves before any concept is named.

This session offers a powerful first encounter with sociological thinking, building students' curiosity, observation skills and confidence in noticing what usually goes unquestioned. By the end, the class will have built a collaborative "sociology wall," bringing together everything they've noticed into a shared, working sense of the sociological imagination: the ability to connect personal experience to the wider social patterns shaping it.