Design Education and the Nigerian Economy
A look at the history of Nigeria reflects that in all spheres of life, nature has provided for the country to be a high performing economic success. Nigeria, the largest in Africa, is rich in human, cultural and natural resources. Nigeria could be described as the Greece of Africa. The influence of Nigerian arts, crafts and design have been felt strongly in other parts of the world. It is lamentable that while most emerging economies are harnessing design education for development and improving quality of lives of their citizenry, the Nigerian political climate has not enabled the formulation of strategic policies that can boost industrial climate of the economy. This has not provided the support and appropriate infrastructure for indigenous design education and development capabilities.  The paper takes a look at the current political policies of Nigeria, its economic reality in the absence of formidable design groups and design policy that can enhance indigenous technical knowhow. The paper also examines the value oriented benefits inherent in design education as experienced in developed economies and how it can be channeled to make its contributions to grow the Nigerian economy.
Industrial Design
Course overview This programme brings together product design creativity with the technical knowledge and skills of engineering. You will develop as a technically competent industrial designer, benefiting from the very latest in new product development techniques. The result is a modern engineering degree that will equip you with an excellent technical and creative grounding for a successful career in designing and developing new products. This module provides students with essential foundational skills in effective hand sketching, visualisation, and final presentation of design ideas. Students are instructed in principles, examples, and demonstrations regarding the use of a variety of design communication media and techniques, for the purposes of conceiving, developing and presenting product design ideas. Programme details and modules listed are illustrative only and subject to change.
Turkish Political Culture and Civil Society : an Unsettling Coupling?
This paper attempts to analyze Turkish politics in the post-1980 period with a special reference to the relationship among the state elites, political elites and societal actors and its impact on the constitution of civil society in Turkey. After the 1980 military intervention, the political and economic realms of Turkey witnessed a relative degree of liberalization through Uzal's neo-liberal policies. The January 24 economic decisions paved the way for economic liberalization as well as letting new economic and societal actors emerge. These new economic actors were different from the prevailing economic actors which used to enjoy having a considerable amount of opportunity spaces in the economic sphere. Together with the Uzal governments, Islamic segments started to become powerful in both political and economic realms. This paper analyses the chief traits of Turkish politics and economics and their impact upon civil society aftermath the 1980 coup in general, and the relationship and/or interaction among the state elites, political elites and societal actors in particular. The engagements of newly-emerging societal and economic actors into Turkish political scene and the challenge of these actors against the so-called 'Kemalist-Republican' elites are also illustrated in the paper. Moreover, state-Islam interaction, politics-Islam interaction as well as Kemalism-newly-emerging societal and economic actors interaction will be studied with a special emphasis to the post-1980 period. The major argument of the paper is that, in Turkey, both civil society issues and political issues reveal outcomes which are primarily shaped by the nature of the relationship between state elites and political elites in general and by Turkish political culture in particular.