Master of Arts in Medieval and Early Modern Studies

at Durham University United Kingdom

The program consists of a set of core and elective modules, culminating in a practice-based business project or a research-based dissertation.

Our focused MSc in Management is designed to prepare you for becoming a successful manager. You will cover at an advanced level, the fundamental subjects needed to manage a business within a complex changing environment.

Criminology is concerned with understanding crime, deviance and institutions of criminal justice.

Criminologists seek to answer questions like: why are some people more likely to commit or be victims of crime than others; how can crime be effectively prevented or controlled; and from a more critical perspective, how do particular activities become defined as “criminal” in the first place and what does this tells us about the nature of power and authority in society?

Overall, the course progressively develops your critical understanding of Criminology through the examination of key concepts and theories as well as substantive issues related to crime and criminal justice. Alongside this, the course teaches critical analytical and methodological skills to equip students with the practical expertise required to engage with and carry out Criminological research. As such, by the end of the course, graduates will be able to draw upon conceptual and empirical material to critically analyse complex Criminological issues in a scholarly fashion.

The degree is based on a modular structure, with students required to take the equivalent of six modules (some of which may be ‘double modules’) within each year of study. Over the course of the degree, modules become increasingly focused on specialist topics and issues, with the chance to undertake a Sociological research project on a specific topic of substantive interest in the final year of study.

The Primary Education degree offers Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) and is ideal for those committed to a teaching career in a primary school. In addition to preparing you to teach the whole curriculum, the course enables you to become a specialist in a particular curriculum area: English, Mathematics or Science.

The degree aims to help you develop an appropriate repertoire of professional knowledge and understanding to provide a foundation for effective teaching in a primary school; an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the core subjects of the National Curriculum; personal skills which would enable you to contribute to a school as a curriculum specialist in one of the core areas; knowledge and understanding of the other subjects in the primary curriculum to a level which will support effective teaching; understanding of schools and the National Curriculum as the framework within which children’s formal learning takes place; classroom effectiveness by drawing upon the expertise of practising teachers; a personal educational philosophy and a professional approach to your work; an understanding of the responsibilities and roles of the primary teacher.

The Primary Education degree offer closely aligns with the research focus and outputs of the department, offering evidence-based, recent and relevant materials alongside other academic elements, which will fully support the developing primary practitioner. There is an opportunity to personalise the degree from the range of optional modules on offer in Years 1 and 2. There are excellent opportunities for the consideration of international and intercultural perspectives; increasingly relevant with current UK policy looking to overseas pedagogies to inform curriculum development.

The course also offers forward-looking professional development opportunities such as the development of the role of the teacher-researcher and the opportunity to explore the role of subject leadership within schools for future career development.

This degree balances fundamental knowledge and practical application in order to provide you with both specialised and transferable skills that are greatly valued in the marketplace. The course emphasises from the start both programming and mathematical skills that allow in the later years engagement through your 'Individual Project' with cutting-edge research being done in the department.

The Geoscience course provides you with maximum flexibility in module choices and is suitable if you have a wide-ranging interest across the Earth Science subjects. This means that assuming pre-requisite module criteria are met, all modules are optional, bar the compulsory Level 3 dissertation module. Because of the high degree of flexibility, this degree is not accredited by the Geological Society of London.

After completing this course Geoscience graduates gain employment in the fields of mineral exploration and petroleum geology, engineering geology, environmental and hydrogeology consultancies, GIS companies, geological surveys, as well as securing places on Masters and PhD courses. The numeracy, critical thinking and problem solving skills that you will develop on the course are highly valued in a wide range of non-geoscience careers, including teaching, business management, insurance and accounting, banking and finance.

Education Studies is a broad multi-disciplinary degree, designed for the intellectually and practically curious. From the philosophical foundations of schooling to the political implications of policy, education is a vast field that has multiple avenues to approach a seemingly straightforward subject. Our degree goes far beyond any classroom and considers education, people and their relationship to the ever-changing world.

The breadth of our modules allows for the creation of pathways through the course. This may be linked to one of the degree's four strands of educational expertise: pragmatic; sociological-philosophical; psychological; and international-intercultural education.

Durham’s Psychology and Anthropology Departments pride themselves on excellence in both teaching and research. The breadth of complementary research strengths across the two Departments means that you are guaranteed to be taught by staff who are actively engaged in the interaction of psychological and anthropological approaches, and are leading figures in their field of research.

In Anthropology, you will use perspectives from human biology, cultural evolution, animal behaviour, and human evolution to illuminate inquiry into the mind and behaviour of past and present human and primate populations. You will learn how anthropology and psychology provide complementary and contrasting perspectives on what it is to be human, as well as a variety of quantitative and qualitative ways of addressing major questions. The interface of anthropology and psychology explicitly integrates intercultural, international and global issues. For example, in anthropology’s traditional focus on cultural diversity and the burgeoning recognition of psychology’s need to address cross-cultural issues and move away from studies biased by Western Educated Industrialised and Rich (WEIRD) samples.

The degree provides the opportunity to develop extensive subject-specific, interdisciplinary, and transferable skills. The course follows the British Psychological Society(BPS) guidelines with an extensive range of options in the final year, drawing both from work in fundamental scientific research and in applied areas of psychology and anthropology. You may choose to take modules that deepen your understanding of a smaller number of anthropologically and psychologically relevant topics or choose to take a more broad and varied selection. Several coherent pathways – for example in animal behaviour, infant and child development, and health – are possible, using complementary modules from the two departments.

Excellent research facilities are available, including a virtual reality suite, developmental testing facilities, and EEG labs (in psychology), as well as extensive collections of fossil hominin casts and material culture artefacts from around the globe, a sleep lab, hormone lab, and field station for primatology in South Africa (in Anthropology). You are encouraged to get involved in research being carried out by your lecturers, thus gaining a deeper and more hands-on understanding of the issues you are learning about in your degree, and adding to your contextual experience.

This four-year Joint Honours degree allows you to further your interest in the study of a modern European language and related cultural topics alongside exploring different periods and themes of history.

You will take a compulsory language module. This is a single module for all languages studied post-A level and a double module for beginners’ languages. These compulsory modules focus on the four skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening. In addition, you choose either one or two from a wide range of modules dealing with various aspects of the literature, film, art, history and politics of the culture you are studying. These cultural modules aim to develop your independent research and analytical skills as well as introducing you to the culture in question.

This course focuses on the Catholic theological tradition, within the more general context of Christian theology. Durham has a strong interest in and engagement with contemporary Catholicism, with a Centre for Catholic Studies, the Bede Chair in Catholic Theology and the St Hilda Chair in Catholic Social Thought and Practice.

This course will provide you with advanced knowledge and understanding of Civil Engineering in three ways. Firstly high-quality taught modules will introduce advanced Civil Engineering topics such as structural design and highways engineering. Secondly, a substantial Civil design element will equip you with the ability to carry out structural design using appropriate design standards and numerical analysis tools. Finally, a major research and development project allows you to demonstrate the ability to work independently on a complex topic and demonstrate initiative in the solution of engineering challenges.

Durham University has many researchers tackling the challenge of ensuring sustainability and resilience of the infrastructure that underpins our society and economy. This sustainable infrastructure will form the topic of many of the substantial projects that you will undertake and you are uniquely placed to take advantage of a broad range of expertise in a general engineering department.