Degree

What causes riots? Is commercialisation eroding childhood? Does poverty lead to crime? The social sciences explore such questions and help inform professionals – from police officers to civil servants to business executives – who want to base their decisions on the best evidence. This degree is designed to be flexible, allowing you to specialise in a particular subject or to develop knowledge and skills from a combination of subjects including sociology, psychology, criminology, geography, politics and economics. You’ll be able to draw together ideas about the major issues that affect individuals and society, and you’ll acquire a wide range of valuable transferable skills – opening up employment opportunities in private, public and voluntary sector organisations.

Where do social order (and disorder) come from? How can we make ourselves richer, and does society always gain? What does justice mean, how do we define our rights? Politics, philosophy and economics (PPE) – and the ideas and values that inform them – are central to how modern societies are organised and governed. This degree explores fundamental questions of power and ideology, beliefs and values, and how income and wealth are produced and distributed.

What is the self? What makes us happy? How do we know what other people are thinking and feeling? Do humans display irrational biases? How does the environment affect people’s physical and mental health? What is justice and why does it matter? How does science make progress and can we trust it? Is there a God? This fascinating course explores how we seek the answers to profound questions about ourselves, our minds, our behaviour, and our place in the social and physical universe.

Our world is divided into different societies. Yet it is increasingly interconnected. Relationships between nations, companies, cultures and individuals extend across regions and the globe. This course explores the political, economic and cultural issues that these complex interconnections create – focusing on international politics, diplomacy, cooperation, war and security; international economics and development; cultural and religious interactions between different societies; and global environmental problems.

From poetry to string quartets, and from sculpture to short stories, the extraordinary range of human culture offers rich possibilities for study. This broad and absorbing course develops a deep understanding of the world we live in and how we got here, covering a fascinating variety of perspectives, periods and subjects – including art history, classical studies, creative writing, English language and English literature, history, modern languages, music, philosophy and religious studies. 

This wide-ranging course will develop and deepen your knowledge of different periods of history mostly after 1750 while providing a critical understanding of political ideas, institutions, issues and theories. You’ll tackle such exciting and challenging issues as power and warfare, security and insecurity, global justice, culture and beliefs, health and medicine, imperialism and resistance, class and gender. Throughout the course you will be learning the skills of both the political scientist and the historian in studying historical materials and contemporary problems; exploring how we understand, interpret and debate past and current events as well as future trends; and investigating a range of critical approaches to historical and political analysis and understanding in an integrated manner

This wide-ranging course will develop and deepen your knowledge of different periods of history from around 1500 to the late twentieth century. You’ll tackle such exciting and challenging issues as power and warfare, culture and beliefs, health and medicine, imperialism, class and gender – learning the skills of the historian in studying historical materials; exploring how we understand, interpret and debate past events; and investigating a range of critical approaches. 

If you are interested in reading between the lines, and being challenged by new ideas and ways of seeing, then this course is for you. English literature is a broad, accessible and important subject. On this course you will study a range of texts dating from around 1570 to the present, from poetry to fiction to film, and discover a variety of approaches for reading them. You will develop your skills of analysis and communication, enabling you to take a fresh look at familiar texts, and to encounter new texts and ideas with confidence.  

If you love the written and spoken word, this course is for you. A comprehensive and stimulating introduction to English language and literature, it investigates how the English language is used in a variety of global contexts, and explores literature from different historical periods and in diverse cultural settings. You’ll explore writing and speech in a wide range of forms, and develop your skills in the interpretation of literary and non-literary texts. 

This degree course offers a stimulating and wide-ranging introduction to English literature and creative writing. You’ll have the opportunity to study and interpret literature from different historical periods and diverse cultural settings – including translations – and to develop your writing skills in several genres including fiction; poetry; life writing; and scriptwriting for film, radio and stage.