Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Politics with Placement

at Anglia Ruskin University - Cambridge Campus United Kingdom

You’re resilient and not afraid to make mistakes. You also know that as an entrepreneur, it’s important to experiment, accept failure and learn to try again.

Our BSc (Hons) Business with Entrepreneurship degree will equip you with tools that can help you develop, test and realise your ideas. You’ll also learn about applying for grants and reflect on what it really means to be an entrepreneur.

While studying at ARU, you’ll make strong professional connections, build a portfolio and – with regular teamwork and pitching – hone your entrepreneurial thinking and grow in confidence.

From financial management to applied econometrics, our Finance with Economics degree will set you up for a career in the world of business.

You want the space to grasp new ideas, to explore the theory behind financial economics and its use in the real world.

Finance and economics isn’t just about numbers. It’s about understanding the importance of those numbers, analysing and interpreting them to better appreciate how people and the businesses around us really work.

Our BSc (Hons) Finance with Economics degree will introduce you to financial management, applied econometrics and much more. We’ll guide you through the issues you might encounter and equip you with the skills and knowledge you need to formulate critical business decisions.

As a BOptom (Hons) Optometry student at ARU, you’ll study in our specialist eye care facilities, learning how to perform eye examinations, diagnose sight problems, improve people’s vision and manage a range of eye conditions.

You’ll spend much of your time in our University Eye Clinic. A working clinic that’s open to the public, it boasts 16 fully-equipped testing rooms and the latest optometric equipment such as an optical coherence tomographer, video slitlamps, and videokeratoscopes.

With support from expert tutors and the chance to gain work experience, this is the perfect place to train as an optometrist.

Qualified optometrists are hands-on, spending lots of time examining patients and managing their visual needs and eye health. And we know that it’s important for you to gain this kind of practical experience.

That’s why more than 50% of your learning time is spent in clinical and lab sessions, practical demonstrations, and our University Eye Clinic.

There’s the chance to visit local hospital clinics too, and get work experience in the community, spending time with eye care charities such as Cam Sight.

In the lecture theatre, we’re often joined by visiting professors, orthoptists and optometrists working in diabetic clinics, hospitals and their own practices. They’ll share their professional insights – as will our expert tutors, who are trained optometrists and dispensing opticians.

These are just some of the reasons why our Optometry degree has had an overall satisfaction score of 90% or more for the past five years (National Student Survey).

As a BOptom (Hons) Optometry graduate, you’ll be ready to take on a pre-registration clinical placement before registering as a fully-qualified optometrist.

Do you want a career that gets to the heart of society’s problems and changes people’s lives? Gain the skills to identify key social challenges, and analyse and identify policies used to address them on this interdisciplinary Masters course.

• Choose to take a work placement as part of your Major Project, with support from the course staff and the Employability team
• Study in Cambridge, a hub for exchanges on social welfare and policy reflected in the many networks and events, including the Festival of Ideas and Festival of Being Human
• Learn from a Course Leader who is a specialist in research and teaching in an international context
• Study on a course with a truly global outlook, from its multicultural students to its focus on international issues
• Attend guest lecturers by key figures in policy-making and field trips to national and international organisations like Chatham House, Oxfam and UNICEF

Why study social welfare and social policy?

• Studying social welfare and social policy will allow you to focus on the areas of most importance to people’s lives, including education, housing, health, and criminal justice, giving you the skills and understanding to make a difference to people’s lives at local, national and international levels.
• It will prepare you for many careers in non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including community organisations, charities, social enterprises and not-for-profit organisations, as well as governmental or academic institutions.

What will you do on the course?

• How can issues such as child labour and trafficking be overcome through global initiatives? Can changes to local policy do anything to stop domestic violence or knife crime?
• On our Masters course, you will explore these and many other issues, comparing different strategies and policies across different countries, and from the perspective of many different disciplines, including politics, criminology and psychology.

Why study social welfare and social policy at ARU?
Our Master’s course attracts multicultural students with a variety of backgrounds from sociology to business studies, and health to the Arts.

Whatever their background, our students are all enthusiastic about making a difference to their communities by improving human rights and living conditions. This might include changing how their society handles issues such as gender equality, prisoners’ rights, children’s education, or environmental protection, among others.

The international dimension of our Masters course will also make you an attractive candidate for potential employers – you will be used to working alongside people from different backgrounds, as well as exploring social issues from the perspective of different cultures.

With its vibrant studio culture and small class sizes, combined with excellent printmaking, 3D, photography and life-drawing facilities, our illustration course has consistently high student satisfaction ratings.

We know that our students want to learn from the best, so all of our tutors are professional illustrators. They’ll help you find your visual style and kick-start your career. But they’ll never forget the reason you chose to study illustration in the first place. At Cambridge School of Art, you’ll find there’s always time to experiment, discover, discuss and create.

Our studios and workshops are second to none, and you’ll spend lots of time working there.

But you won’t be restricted to the studio: you’ll also go on gallery visits, local drawing trips, and our annual overseas visit to cities such as Porto and Seville.

There’s even the chance to study abroad for a semester, in the Netherlands or Poland – with funding on offer to help cover the costs.

We know that your future career is important and you want to build your CV. So we’ll encourage you to grab every opportunity for real-world experience – entering national and international competitions, working on live industry briefs, and taking up internships.

As an illustrator, a world of possibilities awaits you. You could illustrate books, become a graphic artist, design stage sets or product labels, and even work on animated films.

Our BA (Hons) Fashion Design degree will help you forge an identity as a designer, specialising in menswear or womenswear.

You’ll be hands-on from day one, creating your own fashion designs and engaging with all aspects of the design process in our studios, including pattern cutting, draping, textiles and digital media.

You’ll also learn about contemporary fashion promotion, including marketing, styling, fashion photography and art direction – and create campaigns to attract consumers and influencers to your brand. Alongside this you'll learn about the ethics of the fashion industry, and consider issues of sustainability that will help you to develop as a responsible industry professional.

You’ll work closely with students from across our creative community, including fashion students in other years, photographers and filmmakers to create eye-catching campaigns and digital content. Perhaps most importantly, you’ll get time, guidance and support from our team, including technical staff and course leader Mark Hart, who's worked with brands such as Chloe, Alexander McQueen, Warner Bros Records, and London Records.

As a BA (Hons) Fashion Design student at ARU, you’ll have the chance to find placements and internships with high-profile fashion houses and contemporary designers, including Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, Mary Katrantzou, Marcus Lupfer and Mother of Pearl. You can also take an optional placement year.

We also attend trade fairs, such as Pure in London – the UK’s leading fashion buying event – or the fabric and trend show Premiere Vision in Paris; and visit suppliers and other businesses connected to the fashion industry.

Many of our students go on to establish their own labels or work for fashion houses and other well-known brands:

• Micaela Sapinho is now Creative Director of her own label, and has twice shown her collections at Lisbon Fashion Week
• Thanh Cong Vu has gone on to establish his own brand since graduating. While studying Fashion Design at ARU, his designs were shown at Pure and featured in Urban Coco magazine
• Priscilla Acquah Arhin is a textile designer with Samsonite
• Agnieszka Zabek works as Apparel Designer with Reebok
• Tracie Sell is Head of Menswear at Bolongaro Trevor in London
• Olivia Welsh is Creative Director of her own label, Olivia Annabelle
• Stephanie Cornforth is Lingerie Designer for Something Wicked
• Yasmin Lucy Greener is Assistant Accessories Designer at John Lewis.

By the end of the course, you too will have a new collection ready to show to the fashion industry at Graduate Fashion Week, and to the public at our own Graduate Fashion Show and Degree Show.

Accredited by TIGA, our Computer Games Art degree will allow you to develop art skills relevant to the fast-moving computer games industry. You’ll gain 3D computer games skills including modelling, texturing and animation, enabling you to create characters, environments and more.

During your studies, you’ll discover how you can use your visual research, creative experimentation and technical development to forge a career as a computer games artist. You’ll learn how to plan your designs by creating concept art before bringing them to life using interactive software such as Unity 3D.

ARU is the place to be for studying Computer Games Art. The East of England has 135 active games companies, with Cambridge home to developers including Jagex, Frontier Developments and Ninja Theory, who are currently building a new base on Newmarket Road complete with a gaming pub.

Our Computer Games Art course scored 92% for ‘The Teaching on my Course’ in the National Student Survey 2019.

By studying Computer Games Art at ARU, you’ll get the chance to improve your prospects with live briefs and guest speakers from tech giants like Sony, Jagex and Frontier.

Our flexible modules allow you to explore different aspects of digital art, helping you specialise and future-proof your career. And with TIGA accreditation, this course gives you a badge of excellence to show future employers too.

We're also partners with the Global Science & Technology Forum, giving you access to cutting-edge research materials.

During your time at ARU, you’ll receive ongoing support to find placements and work experience relevant to your Computer Games Art and you can take an optional placement year. In recent times, ARM, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Frontier and Just Flight have all offered internships and work opportunities to ARU students.

On our MA Intercultural Communication, you’ll discover the importance of intercultural relationships both to the modern socio-economic climate – and to building a successful career within it.

As part of our postgraduate community in Cambridge, you’ll work alongside students from all over the world, gaining an additional understanding of intercultural environments that will support your studies.

If you’re studying this Masters full-time you’ll have the opportunity to spend a placement semester at a European university via the Eurocampus.

As well as gaining business communication skills, you’ll explore language and cultural theory.

You’ll examine how cultural differences impact our interactions in the workplace and in wider society and consider topics such as migration, identity and how international policy confronts language issues.

By learning to use different methodological tools to understand language and communication, you’ll sharpen your analytical skills and gain the confidence to think independently about the interdisciplinary, and often multinational, challenges of the modern workplace.

Seminars and guest lectures hosted by ARU’s Research Centre for Intercultural and Multilingual Studies will supplement your studies, and you’ll be supported throughout by our expert specialist lecturers.

Illustration is a broad visual narrative practice that has many applications in publishing and the wider creative industry. On our MA Illustration degree you will focus on illustration for social change, an innovative and growing area that addresses the complex social and environmental problems faced by society today.

Illustration skills such as visual storytelling, visual mediation, observation, creative thinking and of course image making are much sought-after, and more and more illustrators take part in change-making processes in organisations, institutes, and government.

Our Masters in Illustration is unique in its focus on building your illustration practice and exploring and developing your role in addressing issues including integration and diversity, behavioural change, community cohesion, and environmental challenges.

Whatever your background, you will develop your visual practice in important areas for illustrators, such as image creation; visual sequencing; concept development; and textuality. You’ll also extend your knowledge of the complexities of socio-environmental problems; institutional and government structures; creative project development and management; design methods; and collaboration processes.

As a graduate, you will have the confidence to start out in a career as an illustrator and play an active creative role in social and environmental change-making processes.

As a postgraduate student at ARU, you will have access to a dedicated base studio, as well as specialist facilities such as animation suites, film photography studios, and the print studio providing for a wide range of printing methods.

You will receive training in creative software such as Adobe Cloud – and you can access training in all our art and creative industries facilities, too. Studying in our dedicated studios at Cambridge School of Art and project locations, much of your work will be practice-based. You’ll take part in live projects, working with an external partner and students from related Masters degrees, as well as proposing and undertaking your own self-directed projects.

As a Drama and Film student, you’ll explore the latest theory and practice in both fields as we help you to grow into a confident, versatile and exciting practitioner with transferable skills to suit whichever field you hope to work in.

Performance is at the core of our Drama and Film degree here at ARU, whether you’re in front of or behind the camera. Your understanding of film theory and history will improve your acting skills and your hands-on knowledge of performance practice will enhance your filmmaking or writing skills.

In drama, you’ll work on public-productions and smaller-scale projects, exploring practices and texts from the 20th century onwards as well as working on original pieces.

In film you’ll explore the language and convention of drama and film, taking in some of the key movements in history from Hollywood cinema through to more experimental modes of performance.

You’ll also have the chance to weight your studies to prepare for a career in the arts or fields such as teaching – get ready to change the way others see the world.