Master of Arts in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literary Studies

at Durham University United Kingdom

The BEng Civil Engineering degree is a high-quality three-year degree designed to offer you the knowledge and skills necessary to join engineering teams on graduation. It is complementary to the four-year Durham MEng, and transfer is possible between the courses up to the end of the second year. It is important to highlight that you also can transfer between the different Engineering programmes that we offer (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, Electronic, etc.) up until the end of the second year, provided that you meet the relevant progression requirements. We believe that students should make an informed decision about their futures and allowing our students to transfer between programmes, once they understand the different disciplines, demonstrates our commitment to this and the Department’s General Engineering philosophy.

In the first two years, the BEng covers the same broad base of engineering education as the MEng degree. The BEng prepares you for an exciting career in modern engineering, with the flexibility to respond to changing technologies.

Durham's MA in Social and Economic History at Durham provides training in research methods for historical topics in any aspect of social and economic history. The MA provides quantitative and qualitative research methods appropriate to a wide range of historical approaches.

Accredited by the ESRC, this MA is part of our four year funding scheme offered by the NINEDTP (Northern Ireland and North East Doctoral Training Partnership. You can apply for 1+3 funding for this MA followed by a PhD in any aspect of social and economic history with expert supervision available within the Department – and with our partner institution in the NINEDTP at Newcastle University. This includes African history, and aspects of governance, as well as traditional social and economic topics.

In the first year of Human Geography we introduce the range of our research specialisms and research methods, including fieldwork. The majority of modules in the second and third year focus on human geography’s sub-disciplines and social science methods. The second and third year elective modules progressively lead to material that is at the cutting-edge of research and include optional overseas fieldwork. In the second and third year, you may take integrated modules (with a mixture of human and physical geography) and one module from the Geography BSc list (subject to timetable compatibility).

The MA in Education provides outstanding opportunities to study a wide range of educational issues. It will provide you with a clear understanding of the nature and significance of policy and practice in education, relevant to researchers as well as professionals in schools, colleges and universities.

A key feature of the course is the facility for you to draw on your own professional and personal as well as academic and theoretical interests, through being able to choose from a range of optional modules to study (see below). You will also be able to explore your own interests in depth through the completion of a dissertation.

The degree has been designed to meet the needs of educational professionals, especially those in teaching, management or administration at all levels of education. Students likely to benefit from the course are those who are interested in education, often teachers or people planning to become teachers, who have a commitment to pedagogy, and educational managers in schools, colleges and higher education institutions, as well as those working in educational administration, in the UK and overseas.

Through its flexible delivery routes, the MA in Education is suitable for students from all backgrounds and countries. In addition to a traditional full-time study route, the course is also available part-time. On the part-time route, teaching is delivered through intensive teaching weekends scheduled around (Durham) school half-term holidays making the course more accessible for those working full-time.

Graduates of the course typically go on to work in museums or large heritage organisations. Graduate students are drawn from a wide range of disciplines, but manual dexterity, a knowledge of chemistry and an enthusiasm and desire to work with museum objects are essential.

The course is delivered through a mixture of lectures, seminars and practical classes as well as a dissertation. Typically lectures provide key information on a particular area, and identify the main areas for discussion and debate among Conservators in that area. Practicals then provide opportunities for you to implement and develop your skills, based on the knowledge that you have gained through your lectures and through independent study outside the programmes formal contact hours. Self-development learning packages allow you to continue your learning in a structured way outside of the practical sessions. The dissertation allows you to develop advanced research skills in an aspect of conservation or artefact studies.

The balance of activities changes throughout the course, as you develop your knowledge, skills and ability as independent learners and practitioners. The course therefore prepares you for work or further study once you have graduated, with an emphasis on taking your learning from the classroom to real life situations in Museums and conservation laboratories. All teaching is delivered by qualified conservators.

The Music and Philosophy joint degree course at Durham enables you to pursue your interest in both disciplines, explore the fascinating intersection between them, and enjoy belonging to two particularly vibrant departments. In Philosophy, a wide selection of modules is on offer, addressing the most fundamental questions that arise in diverse areas of human concern, from religion and politics, to morality and the sciences. In Music, the learning of techniques such as harmony, counterpoint, and aural skills are juxtaposed with an investigation of the most up-to-date thinking in musicology, critical theory, composition (acoustic and electroacoustic), analysis, ethnomusicology, cognitive musicology, and performance.

Geophysics is the application of physical principles to the study of the structure and dynamics of the Earth and increasingly other planets. Geophysics has many practical applications and forms an essential part of the economic exploitation of hydrocarbon and mineral resources. Geophysicists are also involved with assessing and mitigating natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis.

The Geophysics with Geology degree shows progression from the first year through to the third year. In the first year, you share the core modules with the other degree courses, but it also includes additional core modules which specialise in Mathematics and Physics. In the second and third years, you deal with material that is specialist, numerically based and at the cutting-edge of geophysical research.

Graduates from this degree have secured employment across the geoscience sector, within the mineral exploration and extraction industries, in petroleum exploration companies, and with environmental and hydro-geological industries. The advanced quantitative skills developed during this course can provide a strong base for securing employment outside geoscience, for example, in finance, insurance and banking.

The MEng Electrical Engineering degree is a four-year first degree that delivers the breadth and depth that you will need in the world of engineering. It is designed to produce graduates who will go on and lead engineering teams. Your first two years offer you a broad-based engineering education. You then specialise into Electrical Engineering in your third and fourth years. It is important to highlight that you can transfer between the different Engineering programmes that we offer (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, Electronic, etc.) up until the end of the second year, provided that you meet the relevant progression requirements. We believe that students should make an informed decision about their futures and allowing our students to transfer between programmes, once they understand the different disciplines, demonstrates our commitment to this and the Department’s General Engineering philosophy.

In the first three years of your degree at Durham you will take six modules, the year is divided into three terms and there are examinations at the end of each year. The taught modules in the final year are smaller to reflect their specialist content – you will take six of these modules plus a dissertation, or final year, project.

Advances in fields such as Physics, Engineering, Earth Sciences or Finance are increasingly driven by experts in computational techniques. Notably, people skilled to write code for the most powerful computers in the world and skilled to process the biggest data sets in the world can truly make a difference.

The MSc in Scientific Computing and Data Analysis offers an application-focused course to deliver these skills with three interwoven strands:

• Computer Science underpinnings of scientific computing (algorithms, data structures, implementation techniques, and computer tool usage)
• Mathematical aspects of data analysis
• Implementation and application of fundamental techniques in a domain specialisation (presently astrophysics, particle physics, financial mathematics, or earth and environmental sciences).

MISCADA’s Astrophysics specialisation aims to equip students with the background needed to address some of the biggest research questions in fundamental science, such as how we can use large surveys and supercomputer simulations to probe the nature of the dark matter and dark energy. The courses include stellar structure and evolution, galaxy formation, large-scale structure and simulations of structure formation.

In broad terms, Sociology seeks to understand the relationship between individual people and the wider cultural and institutional contexts within which they live. In doing so, it strives not only to make sense of social and cultural systems but also to bring about transformative social change, drawing upon the systematic study of social issues to challenge inequalities and to inform the development of effective, evidence-based policy and practice..

The curriculum at Durham is informed by our core research themes, including: education and inequality; health and medicine; violence and abuse; and social justice. Alongside these and other substantive topics, you will study sociological theory and its development through to the present day, as well as learn the craft of sociological research and analysis.

As well as gaining detailed knowledge of sociological issues, you will also develop a wide range of transferable skills valued by graduate employers, including how to assemble and evaluate different kinds of evidence, how to turn evidence into an effective argument, and how to design social research and analyse different kinds of data.

The degree is based on a modular structure, you will be 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.