Bachelor of Arts (Hons) Joint Honours in Politics and Philosophy

at Manchester Metropolitan University United Kingdom

Studying politics allows you to know what is happening today, how change is enacted, and how you can be a part of it. The principal focus of the degree is power relations between individuals, social groups and nations – so it is one of the most exciting ways to understand why things are the way they are. You’ll study a broad range of social and public policy areas and explore fundamental issues that affect communities in the UK and elsewhere, including: emancipatory political thought and theory, international politics, digital politics, and ‘issue’ politics such as environmentalism and climate change.

The course is underpinned by both the research specialisms of the staff who will teach you and a wide variety of options mean you can pursue your own interests, depending on what you choose to specialise in – with things becoming increasingly flexible as you progress through the course. In the final year, you will engage more directly with current academic debates and contemporary political developments.

We place a heavy emphasis on employability and offer practical skills training, including advanced analytical approaches, which many employers look for when offering placement opportunities. This, alongside the opportunity to study a foreign language or do an exchange abroad, means that a politics degree opens doors to a range of interesting and rewarding career possibilities, as well as providing you with a much better understanding of what is happening right now.

You can also combine politics with another subject and broaden your outlook still further. In your third year, you may have the opportunity to take a placement year with an employer or study abroad, broadening your horizons and boosting your employability.

We’ve designed our MSc Medical Microbiology to enable you to develop an advanced theoretical understanding, together with the practical techniques you’ll need to apply those theories in a research or clinical context.

On this master's in medical microbiology, you’ll gain a well-rounded understanding learning about analytical approaches and human disorders. To further your knowledge, you’ll take an in-depth look at human infectious diseases, developing the skills to understand, control and manage those diseases.

You’ll also complete an independent research project, building professional-level research skills. This is your opportunity to explore the issues that fascinate you – making the most of our extensive links with hospitals across Greater Manchester to conduct research in clinically relevant areas in a real-world context.

By the time you graduate, you should be equipped with the analytical techniques and diagnostic approaches required for practice at a specialist level.

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. Please note, that although this MSc is accredited by the IBMS it does not fulfil the requirements to gaining registration with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and does not provide the opportunity to complete the IBMS Registration Training Portfolio.

Right from the start, our product design engineering degree is all about developing your creativity and problem-solving skills. Even the introduction is a team-based design-and-build challenge – reflecting the kind of project-based, hands-on approach to learning you’ll experience throughout your time with us.

It’s a degree that provides the specialist knowledge and expertise required for a career in commercial product design, introducing you to industry-relevant methodologies, materials and production methods. You’ll also look at the influence on the design of history, culture, markets, materials and lifestyles. And in our specialist laboratories, you’ll get to grips with some of the latest technologies, such as 3D printing and rapid prototyping.

More generally, you’ll learn to look at the world around you through the eyes of a designer, as you establish the fundamentals of design and technology, together with the relationship that products have with their users and their environment.

Study product design engineering with us and in your final year you’ll be ready to put these skills into practice in a new product design challenge and an individual project. You’ll then have the chance to showcase your work in front of industry representatives at the department’s degree show as you look to kick-start your career in this challenging and rewarding field.

Placement options

All of our degrees offer the chance to spend a year getting a taste of professional life. If you choose to go down this route, your degree will take one year longer, with the third year spent working in industry. These optional placements not only give you the opportunity to develop your core skills and learn about how a business really operates in your industry, but also shows employers that you’re ready to get to work. We offer a range of services to help you find the right placement, including employer presentations, advice and placement fairs.

Physical geography offers the chance to understand, investigate and model the physical interactions and processes that influence our environment and landscape. Study physical geography at Manchester Met and you’ll examine modern environmental phenomena and the long-term evolution of the landscape. You’ll explore Earth’s dynamic nature – not just looking at how it changes, but also how much it has changed over time – and you’ll investigate human impacts upon it, particularly in terms of past and future climate change.

While you can learn a lot on campus, there’s no substitute for seeing the physical landscape for yourself. As part of our program, we regularly engage in fieldwork, from day-long trips to residential trips across the UK and overseas. Being in Manchester also means you’ll have plenty to explore on the doorstep, with four national parks within a couple of hours’ drive. You can even spend a year developing your professional skills working on a placement, or broadening your horizons by studying abroad with the four-year route.

In the contemporary art world, as the boundaries between fine art practices are crossed, so too are the distinctions between artist, theorist and curator. This distinctive course challenges these boundaries, offering students the opportunity to develop and expand fine art practice through a deep engagement with art historical knowledge and theoretical ideas. The course also offers a curating pathway, allowing students to explore exhibition-making in its own right and as a form of artistic practice.

With the rapidly changing nature of social and digital media, content needs to be designed strategically, engagingly and at pace.

Our BA (Hons) Future Media Production offers the skills and understanding to work at the forefront of the creative and digital sectors. It’s a course that will equip you with the tools to design, create, manipulate and deliver engaging digital media content for a wide range of audiences.

The course brings together key aspects of contemporary professional media practice, learning beyond the narrow confines of any single discipline. As such, you’ll learn alongside and collaborate with artists and designers across a range of exciting projects – laying the foundations for industry networking, technical and creative skills that will prove vital for a professional future in the creative media industries.

As a student at the School of Digital Arts you will work in an environment that is purpose-built for today’s fast-moving creative and digital sectors – offering boundary-breaking, cross-disciplinary learning that reflects modern project-based working practices. It’s a place that offers the opportunity to discover your passions and explore your role through collaboration within our dynamic creative community of animators, sound designers, filmmakers, games developers and more. And, just as it’s home to a cutting-edge creative community, it has the facilities to match. This means that you can develop industry-standard skills for creating content across the latest digital platforms.  

Just as SODA offers the perfect place as a creative student, Manchester provides the ideal setting. It’s a globally renowned and intensely creative city, second only to London as a hub for the UK’s media and creative sectors. The nearby MediaCityUK is home to major media and television businesses including the BBC and ITV, along with a host of independent operators, while the city also hosts a substantial animation, film and digital/tech sector. For students, it makes this a city for learning industry-relevant knowledge and workplace-ready skills. For budding creative media professionals, it makes the city a starting point for building a network, gaining experience and embarking on a career in the media, games and digital tech industries.

BA (Hons) Fashion Design and Technology has an excellent reputation for producing menswear, womenswear and sportswear graduates who combine design innovation with an in-depth knowledge of the technical aspects of fashion design and manufacturing.

The course reflects contemporary industry standards and encourages students to design and develop innovative fashion products and ranges using both manual and digital technologies. Students work on live projects with industry partners and also have opportunity to undertake a placement and/or overseas study combined with a year in industry.

Students have the option to graduate with a Menswear, Womenswear or Sportswear award, by selecting specialist units in year two and three, or they can work across multiple specialisms. However, all students are encouraged to direct their learning towards specialized target markets such as luxury, outerwear, denim, tailoring, performance or lifestyle sportswear. The practical aspects of the course are underpinned by the study of the business and cultural contexts of fashion and consideration of sustainable industry practices.

Students work towards an exit portfolio that showcases their creative and technical skills appropriate to their chosen careers. While many graduates enter design roles, the technical aspects of the program also prepare students for other careers such as pattern cutting, fashion innovation and product development.

BSc (Hons) Criminology with Quantitative Methods offers exciting opportunities for you to study the cutting-edge discipline of criminology in the vibrant city of Manchester whilst gaining extensive quantitative skills. It is aimed at students who want to investigate crime and its causes, patterns, consequences and responses in a social context, as well as develop a specialism in quantitative research methods.

The first year introduces you to the building blocks of criminology: key concepts and theories, key institutions of the criminal justice system, crime policy, law and practice. You will receive training in a wide range of research methods, both qualitative and quantitative, during the first two years. In the final year you will focus on quantitative methods for designing, implementing and analysing social and criminological research, and complete an independent project.

Embark on our creative writing degree and from the very start you’ll study and practise the art and craft of writing in a wide range of established and new forms, from prose fiction and poetry, to screenwriting and writing for computer games. You'll also focus on how writers read texts, how we can learn from them and how to add your own voice into the ongoing conversation of literature.

You’ll learn from award-winning, leading poets, novelists and scriptwriters at the renowned Manchester Writing School – writers who know what it takes to turn a flash of inspiration into brilliant words on the page. The course also has a strong emphasis on professional development, and in our practical 'Beyond the Page' units you’ll look at professional practice in the literary industry and working in the cultural industry in general. In our workshops, you’ll study the formal aspects of creative writing as well as putting your own skills into practice.

If you choose the placement route, you will be able to spend the third year of your studies on an industry placement. A placement is a key element of the course as it allows you to apply university-based knowledge, skills and understanding to the real world of work. It also gives you an advantage when you begin looking for your first job upon graduating. You may also have the opportunity to spend a year expanding your horizons, either studying with one of our partner universities overseas, or working on a placement within the industry.

Counselling and psychotherapy are terms for a wide variety of evidence-based talking and listening approaches which apply established theories to promote psychological change.

Alongside the main discipline of psychology, each year of this course offers specialist units where you’ll study the fields of counselling and psychotherapy.

Our course also covers all core elements of psychological study as required by the British Psychological Society (BPS), from lifespan development, neuropsychology, and research methods, to social and critical, and abnormal psychology.

In addition to theory, you’ll also learn basic practical counselling skills. Some of these skills may include how to offer acceptance, empathic listening, questioning techniques and how to develop practitioner resilience. You’ll mostly learn through role-play in pairs and small groups, listening, observing and giving feedback to your peers.