Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Writing and Film

at Anglia Ruskin University - Cambridge Campus United Kingdom

Performing is at the core of our Drama degree at ARU.

With our BA (Hons) Drama degree, we’ll help you to grow into a confident, versatile and exciting drama practitioner with transferable skills to suit the field you want to work in.

With a strong focus on performance, you’ll get to work on public productions as well as smaller-scale projects, exploring practices from the 20th century onwards and devising your own productions.

We’ll encourage you to create innovative and daring performance practice as you develop expertise in group collaboration alongside your own solo performances. You’ll also get the chance to weight your studies to suit your interests, be that drama practice, specialising in backstage production or even theatre administration.

You’ll follow an experiential 'learning-through-doing' programme and your degree will see you choosing from a range of career-focused optional modules, completing a 100% practical Major Project, and graduating with a professionally produced showreel and portfolio.

As a student here, you’ll develop your technical and production skills in our specialist facilities. Our technical staff will be on hand to offer help and support.

You can also choose to study abroad for a semester, with funding available to help cover the cost

Closer to home, you can connect with Cambridge’s performance scene through our links to local networks such as Cambridge Arts Network and Cambridge Live. You’ll get the chance to perform in public venues around Cambridge as well as on campus, in the Mumford Theatre and Covent Garden Studio.

Experience being part of a professional troupe with our very own Community Theatre Company and take the chance to perform and collaborate with other creative industries students.

With our BSc (Hons) Audio & Music Technology degree, you’ll integrate theories of sound into your audio projects, as you build a portfolio for a future career in the creative industries, including live sound, gaming, broadcast and film.

Under the guidance of experienced academic staff and industry-active practitioners, you will spend time developing a broad, balanced skill set, acquiring proficiencies in the design, integration, and operation of the technologies and techniques that will underpin your future career.

Study on a degree that scored 100% for Overall Satisfaction in the National Student Survey 2019.

Our Audio and Music Technology course is accredited by JAMES (Joint Audio Media Education Support). The JAMES trained assessors and the accreditation panel members are working professionals with the experience and knowledge to evaluate the industrial relevance of a course.

Make the most of Cambridge’s diverse music scene with our links to local networks such as Cambridge Arts Network and Cambridge Live – from classical music to UK rap or even film and computer game soundtrack, there are plenty of opportunities to explore your style.

Take advantage of an optional work placement between years two and three, plus internships with our industry partners and practitioners. Opportunities like these provide great experience to include on your CV plus a fantastic opportunity to make those essential industry contacts.

Spend time working in climate-controlled recording studios and audio/video production facilities with support from our dedicated technical team. Develop your music and experiment with different styles and techniques as you immerse yourself in our industrious and collaborative student community, and join our award-winning Audio Music Technology Society and gain access to work experience at professional venues.

As a BA (Hons) Philosophy student at ARU, you'll understand both the history of philosophy, as well as cutting edge debates in contemporary philosophy, within areas such as the Philosophy of AI, Ethics and the Philosophy of Art.

Your studies will be supported by our expert philosophy lecturers, who offer one-to-one tutoring and personalised feedback. It’s this support that helped our course rank as top Philosophy degree in the UK (National Student Survey 2020), as well as top for ’Satisfied with Feedback’ (The Guardian University Guide 2021).

You’ll develop your problem solving, critical thinking and judgement skills by analysing major philosophers’ ideas and arguments, developing your own views through rigorous, systematic and creative thought, and learning to use philosophical methods in your everyday life.

These are important skills, with the World Economic Forum ranking complex problem solving and critical thinking among the top ten skills needed to succeed in today’s job market.

There’s the chance to engage in philosophical discussions and debates through the student-led Philosophy Society, and attend events such as our Royal Institute of Philosophy lecture series.

You could also boost your employability by learning a language with our Anglia Language Programme, or studying abroad for a semester.

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.

You’ve set your sights high. You want a course that connects you with up-to-the minute ideas and discussions. We’ve designed our full-time Business with Economics degree to match that ambition.

Here at ARU, you won’t just learn in the classroom. There’s the chance to take economics out of the classroom, debating big ideas such as the minimum wage, capitalism and Brexit in our popular Economics in the Pub sessions.

With an eye on the future, you can also choose to take an optional placement year and add valuable work experience to your CV.

You know there’s more to economics than meets the eye. It’s not just about the numbers, but making sense of those numbers and understanding how society can make the most of its resources.

With economics, there’s never just one way of looking at things. It’s important to be alive to current debates and ways of thinking. You’ll get that as a student in Cambridge.

By studying Business with Economics at ARU, you’ll be looking at the ‘bigger picture’. Together, we’ll explore accounting and mathematics, statistics and econometrics, micro- and macroeconomics. But we’ll also study business more broadly, covering topics such as project management, sustainability, the EU economy and international trade.

As the course progresses, you’ll establish areas of interest that you can develop in your final project. You’ll understand how economics and business, put together, influence organisations’ behaviour and performance – and ultimately impact on all our lives.

These are big ideas. Studying Business with Economics at ARU gives you the space and support you need to grasp them on your own terms.

As a Computer Science student at ARU, you’ll cover all aspects of technologies and user environments, along with the skills to create and manage IT solutions. This will include how to apply hardware and software technology to complex user requirements, and ensure their systems are secure. You’ll diagnose problems and respond to operational challenges. You can also build on this by choosing our placement option, allowing you to apply your knowledge in a real-life industry setting, helping you to gain key employability skills for after your degree.

By studying at ARU, you’ll gain practical experience in our advanced computing laboratories, setting up infrastructure and creating database applications, multimedia tools, browsers and server architecture.

Our Computer Science Masters degree course keeps you up-to-date with latest topics and developments in areas such as web applications and e-business engineering. Along the way you’ll acquire the research skills you need to prepare you for your dissertation.

The Masters Project offers a valuable opportunity to do in-depth research on a topic you are particularly interested in For those with business connections, this is a great opportunity to start working on a real-life project, either with a company or in order to prepare for a full time job straight after graduation. Here’s how James’s dissertation project helped him gain his first professional role as an IT development consultant

By the end of the course, you’ll have experience covering the full life cycle of a web application, specifically:

• Developing the front end and back end of a web app whilst securely storing the data in relational databases
• Using ontologies as an alternative to the databases to store information and query it
• Recognising the vulnerabilities and learning techniques to build secure systems
• Being confident in knowing the infrastructure required to deploy web applications successfully.

From here, you’ll be able to successfully apply your knowledge to the development of any other type of software application (being it mobile, cloud, standalone).
Cambridge is the perfect place to study your Computer Science Masters. Recently named the 'Best UK city to work in' you'll have lots of opportunities to gain relevant work experience locally and, after graduation, can expect an average salary of £35,000. (Glassdoor 2016).

Our BA (Hons) Computer Games Design course will take you through the main areas of computer games development, from idea generation all the way to releasing a playable and polished game.

As you study you’ll develop specialist skills in game design, level design, user interface design, and user experience design. You’ll learn about different methods for user and task analysis that will help you develop intuitive and accessible interfaces.

You’ll also develop a deep understanding of the two most popular commercial game engines, Unity and Unreal – knowledge that is highly sought after in the creative industries.

And of course you’ll build a professional portfolio to showcase your skills to future employers and clients.

Create a diverse portfolio of work that will prepare you for the modern collaborative creative industries, whether you want to make soundtracks for films and games, manage sound for podcasts and live broadcasts, or perform as a DJ.

Our BA (Hons) Music and Sound Production degree will allow you access to industry-standard equipment for recording, mixing, editing and production, giving you valuable practice in working as a professional producer or sound engineer.

As well as advancing your understanding of digital audio theory, MIDI, and sound synthesis, you’ll move beyond move beyond the native mixers, processors and plugins in commercial DAWs towards higher-quality external processors, such as digital signal processing-based plugins and analogue outboard.

As a student at ARU in Cambridge, many of your modules will be shared with our other music courses, giving you the chance to collaborate with different students and develop all-important skills for your professional life, such as teamworking and time management. You’ll also have opportunities to work with students on our film and computer game degrees, creating soundtracks for their projects.

Our optional modules allow you to shape the course for your chosen career. For example, Music Business will develop and broaden your entrepreneurial skills for the modern music industry, with teaching by professionals who have extensive industry experience, and visiting speakers contributing specialist knowledge. Electronics for Music will introduce you to the analysis and design of electronic circuits, small-signal and power amplifiers, and the problems of noise, interference and distortion, helping you evaluate, select, design and test audio electronic equipment for use in your creative projects.

On this degree you will explore the most recent ideas, issues and debates in Criminology and Sociology such as the media, its moral panics and promotion of fear; sex, violence and the profiling of such offenders; deviant behaviour; youth offending; war and terror and genocide, giving you a specialist perspective on crime and society.

You can tailor your BA (Hons) Criminology and Sociology degree to your interests and career goals through a wide choice of optional modules. You might choose to focus on issues from corporate crime to human rights, and sexual violence to burglary. Or you might want to explore the link between intoxicants and crime, or religion and crime.

We have a supportive community of staff and students at ARU. Throughout your BA (Hons) Criminology and Sociology degree, you’ll benefit from one-to-one personal tutoring and dedicated Criminology social media groups.

Through real-life case studies, academic research, and interactive learning sessions, you’ll develop your research and critical thinking skills. You could learn outside of the lecture theatre too, with visits to courts and prisons, where you’ll examine the trial process and methods of rehabilitation, punishment and retribution (historical and modern), deviance, race and gender. You’ll have the chance to travel abroad on one of our international field trips and examine crime and crime control in different geographical and cultural contexts. Or you might choose to study abroad for a semester to gain a more in-depth perspective on alternative criminal justice systems and societies - with funding on offer to cover the cost.

On this cutting-edge Masters degree you’ll study animal behaviour and consider how research technologies in this field can be applied to solve modern conservation problems.

This MSc Animal Behaviour Applications for Conservation reflects growing awareness that knowledge and practical skills from animal behaviour research can help us develop effective solutions to the loss of biodiversity.

Developed in consultation with international conservation organisations, our postgraduate course will enable you to develop the practical and analytical skills and knowledge needed for a career in animal conservation.

This Masters degree in animal behaviour will train you in the technologies and scientific methods used in animal behaviour research and modern conservation.

These will include advanced laboratory techniques, satellite tracking, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software, DNA analysis and field techniques.

You’ll study in Cambridge, where you’ll benefit from our links to many conservation organisations, including the Cambridge Conservation Forum. You’ll be able to make contacts and hear from expert practitioners.

Throughout your course you’ll also be supported by tutors who are world-class researchers in areas such as global change ecology, animal behaviour and welfare, and conservation genetics and evolution. We also offer a residential field trip, usually overseas, which will enable you to explore issues central to wildlife conservation in situ.