Master of Arts in Social Research Methods

at Durham University United Kingdom

Our BSc (Hons) course in Psychology 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 psychology. These final year modules include topics in social psychology, developmental psychology, cognition and behavioural neuroscience, as well as neurorehabilitation, education, and health.

Excellent research facilities are available, including a virtual reality suite, developmental testing facilities, and EEG labs. You are encouraged to get involved in experiments 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.

Psychology is essentially concerned with understanding the mind and behaviour in humans and non-human animals, and it is closely related to a wide range of other disciplines, including biology, anthropology, philosophy, and education. You will get the chance to study people in terms of their internal mental processes, the biological mechanisms that underlie their behaviour, and the social and developmental context in which they act. The degree provides the opportunity for the development of extensive subject-specific and transferable skills.

Our specialist BSc Finance degree places considerable emphasis on the key quantitative and analytical skills needed to pursue a career in finance and financial markets. The degree prepares you for a career in the financial environment by providing a technical curriculum to strengthen the link between academia and practice. The BSc Finance enables you to acquire a critical understanding of theories, empirical evidence and practical application whilst maintaining a rigorous academic underpinning. In particular, you will learn about corporate finance, investments, financial institutions and the vast array of sophisticated financial products traded in today’s global financial markets. Furthermore, you will develop the quantitative techniques needed to analyse, in depth, financial data and financial securities.

This is a degree offered in collaboration with other departments in the Faculty of Social Sciences. It is designed to provide a strong all round training in research methods allied to further specialisation within the fields of politics, international relations and security for those intending to go on to register for a PhD. As such it implements the ESRC research training guidelines for '1+3' PhD students, and includes compulsory elements in a wide variety of techniques including statistics and quantitative methods, but contains less subject-specific content than the other MA courses.

The MSc Cognitive Neuroscience is aimed at students who are seeking to build up knowledge and practical experience of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology. Students from our course go on to pursue careers in research or research related disciplines but also careers in industry or clinical psychology.

The MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at Durham University stands out because it has many practical elements, like workshops and lab placements, that allow you to experience research rather than just hearing about it. As the theoretical background to, and techniques of Cognitive Neuroscience are rarely available to students at undergraduate level, the main objective of this MSc is to provide you with detailed theoretical and practical knowledge of Cognitive Neuroscience and Cognitive Neuroscience techniques that are most relevant right now. This wide-ranging knowledge will make you an extremely strong candidate for future research or research related positions, and will enable you to engage with broad research programmes, utilising a range of techniques.

This course offers students from a wide variety of backgrounds the opportunity to develop their legal knowledge and skills in some of the most intellectually challenging and practically relevant areas of trade and commercial law. The course has a particular emphasis on the international aspects of these areas of legal knowledge and practice.

During the first two terms of the course, you will study taught modules drawn from a wide variety of topics on international trade and commercial law. You then complete your studies by writing a dissertation on a topic chosen by you and supervised by a member of staff with expertise in your selected subject area. Teaching is a mixture of lectures and smaller, student-led, seminar or tutorial groups. The dissertation is pursued by independent research with individual supervision.

Students attending the course are drawn from a broad range of countries, and their previous academic or professional experiences enrich the course. The School is host to the Institute of Commercial and Corporate Law, and students on the LLM are encouraged to participate in its activities.

We operate a modular system in which you will study six modules each year. The Biological Sciences BSc (Hons) three-year degree course has been designed to allow you more choice between modules in each successive year so that you can follow specialised routes within Biological Sciences, or address specific areas of interest, as you progress..

Recommended module combinations (“routes”) to allow various themes of specialisation are available, although these still allow choice at each level of the course. We have specified recommended routes corresponding to the following subject areas:

• Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
• Biomedical Science
• Cell Biology
• Plant Science
• Genetics
• Ecology and Environmental Science.

The MA Intercultural Communication and Education course develops critical understanding of education and intercultural communication in the context of global movements of people and the internationalisation of education. The course provides students, educators, and policymakers with resources for reflecting on and responding to the growing need for intercultural education and communication in an increasingly intercultural/international world. This course is available for part-time and full-time students through the academic year.

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 is a four-year MChem degree accredited by the Royal Society of Chemistry. You will spend the first three years developing an understanding of a broad range of modern chemistry covering organic and inorganic synthesis, physical characterisation methods, and chemistry at the interfaces with biosciences, engineering and physics. You will also gain a broad range of practical skills in synthesis, physical measurement and data analysis. In your final year you will carry out an individual research project at one of our overseas partner universities addressing a novel area of contemporary chemistry, whilst following some chemistry at the research forefront. Throughout the degree you will develop your chemical understanding, problem-solving, independence and practical skills. Graduates of this course are well-prepared for higher-level study, work in the chemicals sector, and roles requiring problem-solving and numeracy skills.

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.