Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Early Years and Childhood Studies

at Manchester Metropolitan University United Kingdom

This course is at the forefront of production design and manufacturing practices and brings together students from creative and technical backgrounds, to foster original approaches to product design for manufacture. It supports you to explore and develop personal design methodologies and philosophies, and locate these within a deep understanding of historical, contemporary and future design practices, and wider social and cultural contexts.

You will undertake core units, delivered by production design specialists, consisting of design theory and practice lectures, material and manufacturing workshops, group seminars, individual tutorials, live external projects, and research study trips. Practical design development is supported by extensive hand and machine workshops for wood, metal, ceramics, glass and plastics, and digital workshops for laser cutting and large scale CNC routing.

Optional units facilitate innovative cross-disciplinary opportunities, supporting the development of collaborative working with students from within the material making and manufacturing cluster of MA/MSc/MFA Craft and MA/MSc/MFA Textile, and across the wider postgraduate design community. There are cross-faculty options to study within the faculty of “Science and Engineering”, acquiring advanced 3D CAD skills for industrial production, and utilising the latest advanced 3D printing processes. The Manchester Metropolitan Business School option addresses commercial aspects of design, enabling students to locate their ambitions within a defined financial model.

You will able to explore and challenge all aspects of product design, embracing opportunities for innovation across markets and production levels, from one-off making and batch fabrication, to flexible digital manufacture and high volume industrial production.

Every great business starts as a small seed of an idea. The ones that make it are those that understand their market and have strong strategies to grow and adapt.

On this course, learning that knowledge from the beginning will get you ahead of the competition. Whether you’ve just started a business (or plan to), are working in a small start-up, or want to apply entrepreneurship principles to a career elsewhere, this course gives you the skills to maximise your chances of success.

A real career journey
You’ll begin with idea generation and business planning, before moving on to strategy, which includes looking at marketing and logistics and supply chain. Plus, learn about the policy, cultural and local environments within which entrepreneurs operate and enterprises thrive. Finally, work on a live business project and pitch your idea to investors before writing up what you’ve learned in the research project.

Every step of the way you’ll learn practical skills you can put to use in your own business.

Food for thought
While the practical skills are vital, you’ll also learn about management systems and analyze organizations’ socio-political environments. By putting your work into context, we believe you’ll be a much more effective entrepreneur when you graduate.

Topics like ethics and globalization are relevant to any business. With our expert research and teaching staff, and visiting professionals, you’ll hear about the latest industry trends as they’re happening.

MA Contemporary Curating explores the notion of exhibition practice in contemporary culture and considers curatorial methods and strategies in the context of the gallery and museum, as well as in projects such as biennials, public artworks and commissions. The course considers ways in which different kinds of artworks and projects are mediated through the exhibition process.

The shifting relationship between artist-institution-curator-critic/writer forms a central element to the course. The course also explores the potential of seeing curating as something that can be applied to different forms of knowledge: publications, symposia, events and interventions.

Illustrators work within many disciplines, and are able to visualise, elucidate and extend the meaning of a given field of knowledge or information and communicate ideas and narratives to specific audiences.

The contemporary practice of illustration is multidisciplinary, incorporating drawing, printmaking, traditional and digital media, model making, performance and collaborative, interactive practices.

The MA in Illustration is designed for creative practitioners who wish to advance their knowledge, skills and specialism within this expansive field.

Each student will develop a practice-led investigation within this broader context, actively constructing a bespoke body of design knowledge which combines theory, practice, research, entrepreneurship and innovation from a wide range of creative and research-driven activities.

They will be taught to question and expand their creative thinking and generic design process by developing their analytical skills; engaging in critical dialogues; work independently, collaboratively and interdisciplinary; experimenting in a range of directions before delivering professional and innovative outcomes to defined audiences with confidence. All creative activities are supported by strategic thinking, robust methodologies and informed by practice-led research.

Games design offers a route into a form of entertainment that’s not only one of the world’s most popular but is also constantly evolving, innovating and redefining its own boundaries. In short, the games industry is an exciting place to be and our BSc (Hons) Games Design course can offer your route into it.

Throughout the course, you’ll find an activity-led approach focused on the practical processes of making games. So, with our support you’ll build up a strong portfolio of games and game-like artefacts. As you progress, you’ll have the chance to pursue the specialist areas of the discipline that interest you most, and with cutting-edge assessments like our ‘Game a Week’, you’ll also build up your abilities as a games designer. Then, in your final year, you’ll not only work solo on your own game, but also work on a large-scale game through a series of smaller projects within a simulated game studio.

The School of Digital Arts offers the perfect setting for that kind of collaboration. That’s because our innovative curriculum paves the way for the same cross-disciplinary teamwork you’ll find in the professional digital sector – by working with students in sound design, animation and media production as well as students from our Department of Computing and Mathematics. The result is an environment that fosters creativity and helps you build a varied, well-rounded skillset. And, because SODA is purpose built with industry-standard facilities, you’ll leave us equipped with industry-standard technical skills too.

As a Games Design student, you’ll find Manchester offers both the perfect backdrop for your studies and an ideal launching pad for your professional ambitions. It’s not only home to a rich heritage of games publishing, but today has the largest media and creative sector outside London. On our doorstep, you’ll find a globally recognised web and UX sector, as well as renowned CG, visual effects and VR/AR agencies and at MediaCityUK in Salford, the BBC’s digital and games teams. All in all, it provides a range of opportunities for a graduate ready to make a statement in the world of games development.

Mastering the science of blood – exploring its characteristics and disorders, and understanding how it’s transfused – impacts far beyond the laboratory.

We’ve designed our MSc Haematology and Transfusion Science course to enable you to develop an advanced theoretical understanding and the practical techniques you’ll need to apply those theories in a research or clinical context.

You’ll start by developing a well-rounded understanding of biomedical topics, learning about analytical techniques and human disorders. You’ll then look at a range of specialist units – offering an in-depth look at everything from blood cells and diseases of the blood, to blood groups, transfusion methods and immunological aspects of blood. From there, you'll be ready to tackle the issues that fascinate you, with an independent masters research project.

Whether you study full-time for a year or part-time for up to three, our haematology and transfusion science masters can open doors for your future. From furthering your career in a hospital laboratory or working in a research facility, continuing your studies or moving into teaching or management, be ready for a career full of impact.

Our course is accredited by the Institute of Biomedical Science (IBMS) which means our teaching is of a high standard and provides wide-ranging, research-informed education to ensure you develop the practical skills and experience that employers’ value.

Law underpins our society. A law degree gives you a unique insight into everything, from the economy to the criminal justice system. And it gives you a huge range of skills that will last you throughout your career.

The LLB (Hons) is your passport to a rewarding future – whether you have ambitions to be a solicitor, barrister, academic researcher, or a business person.

Discover your niche
We cover all the subjects you need to know; tort, contract, criminal law and property law – you’ll get a thorough grounding in the essentials.

And, thanks to our teaching team’s wide range of specialisms, from families to sports, we offer exciting optional units beyond the core curriculum. Interested in gender issues? We have one of the leading experts on trans rights, Professor Stephen Whittle OBE.

Practise your skills
Mooting is a key part of any legal education. Our mock courtroom is the perfect place to develop your confidence and fine-tune your performance. You’ll have classes and extra-curricular activities there, and you can even use it for your final year project.

Ready to test yourself in the real world? You can work with a qualified solicitor offering pro bono services to local people. You might join the Business Law Café offering advice to local SMEs, or maybe you’ll help someone with legal advice and support they wouldn’t normally be able to afford.

The world around us is changing – and our environmental science degree will help you understand how. You’ll learn the skills and knowledge to measure, model and assess environmental change and its impact. Developed with employers, including environmental agencies and private businesses, this is a program with real-world relevance, built around developing the techniques and expertise you’ll find in the workplace.

The course combines aspects of physical and life sciences, helping you build an understanding of environmental issues today. You’ll also gain a wide range of practical and analytical skills, working in the lab and the field. By the time you graduate, you’ll be able to collect, process and analyse data from a range of sources across different scientific disciplines – giving you the understanding to make informed recommendations in a professional context.

Placement options
All of our geography and environment degrees have been designed to be flexible. You can opt for the four-year placement degree route and spend Year 3 on a professional placement with a degree-related organisation.

Alternatively, if you opt for the four-year study overseas route, you will spend your third year in Europe, North America or Australia.

The School of Digital Art's (SODA) Games Art course aims to empower you with the knowledge and skills to create immersive art for games and the interactive experiences of the future. It will explore games art in a range of professional contexts, through interdisciplinary investigations in imaginative concept art, dynamic character design, and immersive world-building. It will synthesise industry-standard tools, techniques and processes with emerging technologies, disruptive research and design thinking.

As a Games Art student you will be part of the School of Digital Arts and will be based within a brand new purpose-built building, equipped with the latest emerging technologies to enable you to develop industry-standard skills for creating and researching content across the latest digital platforms.

SODA is well positioned within Manchester for building a network and developing your research and practice in the media, games and digital tech industries. It is also home to staff from a wide range of disciplines who are research active and experts in their chosen areas. They enjoy well-established links to the wider creative media, arts and digital tech industries in Manchester, nationally and internationally.

The exciting interdisciplinary nature of the course may involve collaborative opportunities with students on other SODA courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, from faculties across the university, such as Arts and Humanities and the Department of Computing and Maths in the Faculty of Science and Engineering.

Supported by guest lectures from international artists, industry practitioners and academics, you will position your work within wider professional and global contexts to develop an innovative, creative practice and research projects.

The MChem (Hons) Pharmaceutical Chemistry is an integrated four-year undergraduate masters degree providing an excellent grounding in the skills and knowledge vital to a future as a pharmaceutical chemist working in drug discovery.

Throughout the programme, you’ll study a wide range of subjects, both to gain a good understanding of the wider subject and to develop the specialist skills central to pharmaceutical chemistry. So, while you’ll study general chemistry, research methods and professional laboratory techniques, your programme will also focus on more specialist areas like drug testing, drug efficacy, computer-based drug design and the quality control of pharmaceuticals.

The MChem (Hons) Pharmaceutical Chemistry degree also includes a research project unit, where you spend a year focusing on a major independent project in pharmaceutical chemistry that you design, carry out and present, alongside your other areas of study.