Core modules
What you will learn
- To apply key sociological categories such as class, gender, and ‘race’ to analyse various social problems and imagine creative solutions to these issues
- How societies have changed over time and how key institutions within these have functioned
- How we might explain offending behaviours and explore the effects of crime on individuals and communities
- How the criminal justice system operates and with what impacts
- To search for answers to social justice issues by examining and questioning the role of the police, courts, prisons and civil society
- To critically engage with theoretical and methodological debates in contemporary Criminology and Criminal Justice as well as in Sociology
- To develop theoretical and conceptual knowledge and enhance your understanding of empirical research
This degree covers topics such as:
- Culture and ethnic identities
- Geo-political conflict
- Gender
- Environmentalism
- Social movements
- Sexuality
- Class and capitalism
- Social theory
- State crime
- Terrorism and issues of security in global context
- Punishment and community justice
- Youth crime and youth justice
- Policing
- Prisons
- Inequalities
- Discrimination, racism, xenophobia
- Health and illness in society
Year One
History of Sociological Thought
What holds societies together? How do societies change? And how is politics in the conventional sense affected by factors such as class, status, ethnicity or religion, or the state of the economy? These are some of the questions with which you will engage with when you consider the history of sociological thought. You will gain skills of research, analysis and debate by considering the extent to which sociology may be considered a science and how the evolution of sociological thought has been shaped by events and the cultural, economic and political problems of the day.
Read more about the History of Sociological ThoughtLink opens in a new window, including the methods of teaching and assessment (content applies to 2024/25 year of study.
Criminology: Theories and Concepts
This module will develop your understanding of key criminological perspectives and will encourage you to reflect on different assumptions and ideologies behind these different perspectives. It will equip you to be able to apply criminological theory to a broad range of contemporary problems of crime, social inequality disorder and social harm.
Read more about the Criminology: Theories and Concepts moduleLink opens in a new window, including the methods of teaching and assessment (content applies to 2024/25 year of study).
Researching Society and Culture
What is society and how do you study it? Is human behaviour governed by rules similar to the natural world that you can study objectively? Or do human beings consciously act upon their environment and change the world through creativity and intelligence, driven by their own understanding and motivations? These are some of the questions that this module will explore.
You will be introduced to the core ideas behind sociological research and the practical tools to undertake research yourself. As well as looking at some of the key qualitative methods (for example, interviews, ethnography and discourse analysis), you will also examine the political, ethical and practical issues that social research inevitably entails.
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Crime and Society
This module will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between crime, its social context and current issues in the socio-political global context of crime and punishment. You will explore the sociological approaches to crime, victimisation and punishment through categories such as class, gender, ethnicity, mobility and space. You will develop the necessary analytical, theoretical and critical skills to examine contemporary problems and debates in the fields of criminalisation and justice.
Read more about the Crime and Society moduleLink opens in a new window, including the methods of teaching and assessment (content applies to 2024/25 year of study).
Introduction to Social Analytics in Social Inequalities Research
In the age of ever-increasing data availability which is paired with a growing sophistication of statistical techniques, the opportunities for social science research are vast. This module will give you an understanding of the basic elements of core descriptive statistics which will allow you not only to critically engage with quantitative findings in existing social science research, but also conduct quantitative analysis yourself. The module covers the topics of conceptualisation, operationalisation and measurement, as well as the principles of sampling and the basics of research design. You will be introduced to the process of social science research and quantitative methods in one hour lectures, and then explore these in extended seminars (2h) both through readings, and the statistical software SPSS. We will be working on real data sets, such as the European Social Survey.
Read more about the Introduction to Social Analytics in Social Inequalities Research module, including the methods of teaching and assessment (content applies to 2024/25 year of study).
Year Two
Designing and Conducting Social Research
This module will teach you the core concepts and practical skills to undertake qualitative social research in academic and professional settings. These include research design, ethnography, in-depth interviewing, documents and discourse. As well as practical skills, you will investigate how social research has changed in recent decades, considering:
- ethical questions when researching life online
- how (and whether) you should study Twitter
- effects of social media on social interactions
- how to engage diverse audiences
You will also gain analytical skills to critically evaluate previous research and develop your ability to collect and analyse data using a range of qualitative methods.
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Modern Social Theory
This module will introduce you to the main thinkers and movements in critical social theory. Topics include Marxism, post-structuralism, class and culture. The changing conceptualisation of power and class is a focus throughout the module. This helps you to see how the different theoretical approaches relate to each other, and to historical and political events.
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Gender, Race and Sexualities in the Criminal Justice System: Policy and Practice
This module will develop the necessary analytical, theoretical, and critical skills to analyse the complex relationship between gender, race, and sexualities in criminal justice institutions. You will be presented with contemporary conceptual issues around the categories of race, gender and sexualities and will be invited to consider how these are essential to unpacking current problems in policing, courts, sentencing, prisons, and community justice settings. The module will unpack criminalisation and victimisation in relation to contemporary problems linked to misogyny, sexism, racism, and homophobia. In this module you’ll have the chance to engage with key readings in feminist criminology, queer criminology, and in post-colonial, southern criminologies and will be invited to consider practical and policy-informed solutions to some of the most enduring problems of contemporary criminal justice systems.
Read more about the Gender, Race and Sexualities in the Criminal Justice System: Policy and Practice moduleLink opens in a new window, including the methods of teaching and assessment (content applies to 2024/25 year of study).
Policing and Society
The institution of the police is one of the state’s most important and yet most scrutinised and challenged institutions. Questions around policing and justice are arguably some of the most urgent in contemporary criminological scholarship and need theoretical as well as practical examination. In this module we sociologically and criminologically unpack the purpose of the police and consider different approaches to policing. We also examine the impact of policing on different communities and explore current debates around racism, discrimination, and excessive force in policing practices. Taking an international as well as critical perspective we consider the evolution, efficacy, and viability of the police and of policing in the 21st Century.
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Year Three
Dissertation
Dissertations are the result of independent research on a sociological topic of your choice, with some guidance from your supervisor. Instead of writing an essay on a pre-determined topic or doing an exam, you get the opportunity to:
- Choose the topic
- Work out how to study it
- Collect and assess relevant information
- Analyse and criticise the information
- Write an account of how it was all done in 10,000 words
Your dissertation aims to use a selection of concepts, theoretical ideas, observations, statistical findings and your own faculties of criticism and imagination in order to reach convincing defensible conclusions about a topic which interests, challenges or puzzles you.
All Single Honours Sociology students must do a dissertation in their final year. Joint Honours degree students may opt to do a dissertation.
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Optional modules
Optional modules can vary from year to year. Example optional modules may include:
Year One
- Sociology of Race
- Sociology of Gender
- Life of Media: Past, Present and Future
- Sociology of Education
- Class and Capitalism in the Neoliberal World
- International Perspectives on Gender
Year Two
- Commercial Cultures in Global Capitalism
- Educational Inequalities
- Relationship and Family Change: Demographic and Sociological Perspectives
- Becoming Yourself: The Construction of the Self in Contemporary Western Societies
- Media, Audiences and Social Change
- Practice and Interpretation of Quantitative Research
- Multivariate Secondary Analysis of Social Data
- Political Sociology
- Gender and Violence
- Surveillance and Society: Race, Gender, Class
- Beyond the Binary: Trans-forming Gender
- War, Memory and Society
- Social Theory of Law
- Environmental Sociology
- Youth, Crime and Criminal Justice
Year Three
- Social Movements and Political Action
- Racism and Xenophobia
- Ethnography and the Anthropological Tradition
- Transnational Media Ecologies
- Race, Resistance and Modernity
- Sociology of Knowledge, Science and Intellectuals
- Punishment, Justice and Control
- Feminist Pedagogy/Feminist Activism
- Postcolonial Theory and Politics
- Queering Sociology
- State Crime, Human Rights and Global Wrongs
- Applying Quantitative Methods to Social Research
- Experiments in the Social Sciences and Humanities Sociology of End Times
- Global South and Indigenous Feminisms
- Social Data Science
- Sociology of Green Transformations
- Sociology of Film, Film as Sociology
- Drugs, Crime and Society
- The Social Life of Things
- Religion and the Planetary Crisis
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