Bachelor of Arts in Theatre

at Brunel University London United Kingdom

Delve into a degree that will teach you the intricacies of how societies work and learn to understand how people cope with inevitable societal changes on our exciting Sociology BSc. You’ll develop the skills to put yourself in other peoples’ shoes as you study their behaviour and understand why they think in a certain way.

Your degree will give you a thorough understanding of how social issues such as poverty, unemployment, social conflict, and the social and economic consequences of rapid and profound industrial and economic change are redefined by contemporary processes of individualisation, globalisation and the growth of new forms of communication.

The first year is designed to offer you a solid base in theoretical and methodological innovations in sociology. As you progress through the course, you will be able to choose modules you are interested in to actively shape and apply your learning to the issues you wish to interrogate. In your third year, you’ll work on a dissertation focusing on an area of interest of your choice. Your dissertation can be a theoretical or practical dissertation, so you can work to your own strengths.

Depending on the modules you choose, you may have the option go on fieldtrips where you will be able to apply your learning to current issues and broaden your theoretical imagination. Previous fieldtrips have included: Barbican; British Board of Film Classification; London Migration Museum; Museum of Comedy; Museum of London; regeneration areas (e.g. Spitalfields, Smithfield); and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

As you’ll be taught and supported by academics who are not only experts in their field but are actively engaged in research, you’ll develop skills that can be applied from the classroom to the workplace. They know the industry inside out, so you know you are learning from experienced professionals who will bring their unique insights into the classroom and will ensure your learning is up-to-date.

Gain an insight into life after your studies by putting your learning into practice by opting for a one-year work placement or two short placements for six months at a time. You will graduate with valuable work experience to enhance your employment prospects and will be able to develop an understanding the working world. We have excellent links with a wide range of notable external organisations, so you will have the opportunity to apply for high quality placements across London.

Some of our sociology students have done their placements abroad working as teachers in Ghana. Others have undertaken placements at a variety of companies including Deluxe Entertainment, the Disney Channel, the Home Office, British Youth Council, Citizens Advice Bureau and the Department of Work and Pensions.

This is a broad-based degree which will enable and encourage you to specialise in areas which particularly fascinate you. As a graduate of this dynamic degree, you will leave us with various transferable skills that are key to the contemporary employment market. 

Perhaps you enjoy writing, but prefer working with the facts rather than fiction? Or you have a keen interest in presenting to camera as a broadcast journalist or you’re an experienced blogger or vlogger. If so, a journalism degree might be good match for you.

Brunel’s Journalism and Culture BA course offers a balanced combination of journalism practice and theory to help provide the tools you need to pursue a variety of roles within the industry.

As part of the course you will learn the skills of journalism such as research, pitching story ideas, interviewing, reporting and writing across multi-media platforms as well as the relationship between journalism and culture and society.

You’ll learn across video, audio and magazine journalism and because it’s so hand-on you’ll feel like you’re building real skills for future.

As you journey through the course you’ll develop a critical understanding of the communication environment where journalism and media and cultural industries operate, as you develop the analytical ability to explore intellectual inquiries and present findings.

This London journalism course is taught by world-class academics, many of whom are active professional journalists who will be sources of inspiration when you come to do your own journalism research project in your final year.

Journalism and Culture BA has a strong emphasis on digital technology and multi-platform journalism and you will learn in a 24-hour, state-of-the-art, multi-platform digital newsroom and broadcast facilities, using the latest edition industry-standard hardware and software.

The course will also enable you to develop a critical and in-depth understanding of the media industry that will help you succeed in the fast-changing digital world.

In your second year, you’ll have the option to take the NCTJ (National Council for the Training of Journalists) Diploma in Journalism at no extra cost. The NCTJ Diploma is the number one industry recognised gateway into journalism, sought after by media professionals worldwide.

Once you graduate, you’ll have a unique set of skills and expertise that will give you a competitive edge when applying for jobs with cultural, political and social decision-making organizations in the UK and across the world.

Brunel students enjoy their own creative writing journal to showcase their talents as well as the Brunel Union of Students ‘Le Blurb’ publication, so they’ll be plenty of avenues to practice your craft.

You’ll also get to hear from alumni and guest speakers about what it’s really like to work in the journalism. Previous representatives from small papers, as well as the BBC and The Guardian have helped to provide further insight into the industry.

The location of the University is within easy reach of London and the West End, the British Library, museums and other research centres of national and international importance, offering endless opportunities for additional learning and leisure.

Our Digital Design BSc degree is a modern, hands-on course that combines digital technology and creative design. It has been developed to equip you with the knowledge and practical skills to create, design and develop interactive and engaging digital products, services and experiences, and 2D/3D graphical content.

You will be introduced to creative technologies and motion design. You’ll learn about UX design and development for the web, digital graphic design and video production. You'll also study digital photography, 3D design and 3D animation. You will then progress to skills in the design and development of more complex digital artefacts for current and future mobile, web and IoT applications involving 3D design and animation, media aesthetics, motion graphics and immersive mixed reality. In your final year, you can choose from modules in digital experiences and creative technology design with additional options in advanced animation and advanced digital graphics and motion design.

Professional and transferable skills required for working in the creative digital industries are developed throughout each year of the course.

Our modern, industry standard digital media facilities include a green screen and post-production studio, motion capture, sound and photography studios, 4K digital cinema cameras, and a dedicated render farm. You'll have independent access to exclusive PC and Mac computing workshops and benefit from the latest industry standard specialist software for graphic design and image/video editing, 3D animation, digital compositing and rich interactive content creation. There's also the opportunity for you to use our immersive virtual environment laboratory. This includes an immersive dome (planetarium) set up for Brunel by the National Space Centre in Leicester, and is one of only a few in the UK!   

There are guest lectures covering lots of different digital media topics and the visiting lecturers provide industry insight and advice on how to structure your portfolio and showreels. Speakers include creative and design directors, user experience designers, 3D graphic supervisors, as well as mobile and web developers.

Visits are arranged to design agencies, TV and photography studios, and post-production houses. There’s also the opportunity to go to conferences and this is your chance to build networks with key industry experts. In addition, you have the advantage of Brunel’s close location to London for trips to exhibitions celebrating the creative industries.

The course can be studied full-time over three years, or four years with a placement year. We encourage the placement year option. This time in industry helps you to further prepare for the world of work and you’ll have a year’s worth of invaluable professional experience when you graduate. If you decide to go on a digital media placement year, you will have the opportunity of working in the ever-growing creative industries.

The end-of-year highlight is the BrunelDigital degree show hosted on Brunel’s one London campus. Exhibiting your creative work at this event is a great way for you to connect with leading creative technologists and showcase your talent.

Brunel’s digital design course is fully accredited and industry recognised by ScreenSkills, the industry-led skills body for the UK’s screen-based industries. It carries the ScreenSkills Select quality mark which indicates that it is best suited to prepare you for a career in the screen industries. An added benefit as a student on this ScreenSkills endorsed course, is that you're eligible to apply for a Royal Television Society (RTS) bursary.   

The digital media courses at Brunel are the only ScreenSkills-accredited degree programmes in London and the South East.

This course has a placement option. Find out more about work placements available.

Perhaps history has always been an interest for you or it’s something you’ve developed an interest in by studying it at school or college. Either way, everyone on the Modern History BA at Brunel starts off on the same level playing field, without the need for a history qualification.

History is about understanding what it means to be human. Studying and analysing it will take you back into the societies of the past to help you understand contemporary issues all the more. It’s also a subject that will help to demonstrate your intellectual acumen and understanding of world affairs, which will be an asset in so many fields of work.

Your studies at Brunel will focus on the history of Britain, Europe and the wider world in the modern period, looking closely at life as it was lived then, observing differences, similarities, patterns and connections with the present day.

Along the way, you will build a toolkit of transferable skills gained through evidence gathering, analysis, problem-solving, drafting and communications, which can be applied to a wide range of industries within the public and private sector.

Opt for a placement year and you’ll be adding a year’s experience in a job role and industry sector that will help to show future employers where you might be a good fit for their organisation. Your placement doesn’t have to be related to history and you’ll get plenty of support from staff and resources in the University’s Professional Development Centre to help steer you in the right direction.

The course has established links to world-renowned archives and libraries based in and close to London,including the Caird Library (National Maritime Museum),The National Archives and the Imperial War Museum,among others. Additionally, the original WWII operations bunker used by Sir Winston Churchill on the former RAF Uxbridge site is a walk away from campus where Brunel students regularly volunteer.

Our Civil Engineering with Sustainability BEng degree is a highly innovative course that has been developed to equip you with a broad range of knowledge and skills to meet the real world needs of the civil engineering and construction industry.

You will study the traditional elements of civil engineering including design, structures, materials, fluid mechanics, geotechnics and maths. You’ll be introduced to a range of sustainable infrastructure topics and then progress to specialist subjects such as water and wastewater engineering.

Access is available to custom-designed technical facilities to work on your laboratory experiments. These include fluids and hydraulics laboratories, and structures, materials and geotechnics labs. The latest industry standard engineering software packages are available for you to use in dedicated computer clusters.

During your studies, there is a residential field trip with hands-on experience in surveying and geology using industry standard equipment. You will also benefit from guest lectures delivered by industry professionals, as well as visits to construction sites and civil engineering development projects.

Due to recent changes to the engineering curriculum, our accreditation is currently being reconfirmed with the Joint Board of Moderators (JBM). The JBM compromises the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institution of Structural Engineers, the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation, and the Institute of Highway Engineers. We have every expectation that our accreditation will be renewed later in the academic year.

This BEng degree in civil engineering with sustainability can be studied full-time over three years, or four years with a placement year. The BEng degree meets the educational requirement to become an Incorporated Engineer (IEng). You may wish to transfer to the MEng route of study at the end of your second year, subject to meeting the progression requirement. The MEng degree fully meets the educational requirement to become a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and involves a further year of academic study.  

We encourage the placement year option. This time in industry helps you to further prepare for the world of work and you’ll have a year’s worth of invaluable professional experience when you graduate. If you decide to go on an engineering placement year, you will have the opportunity to work in the civil engineering sector. It could be for a contractor, consultant or government authority.

The Brunel Economics and Management BSc offers students interested in careers in management a detailed understanding of how economies and corporations function. 

You’ll examine how resources are allocated in response to consumer demand, business objectives and government policy, and how incentives are aligned between shareholders, managers and employees.

Specifically, your economics studies will give you a broad understanding of the production, distribution and capital formation activities within which organisations operate, while your management specialisation will focus on the coordination and use of materials and labour to achieve defined goals.

You’ll also study econometrics and develop sought-after skills in data modelling, and get training in analytical packages widely used by business and financial institutions such as SAS, EViews, Bloomberg, Reuters and STATA.

We offer two study options. You can choose three years full-time or four years full-time with a one-year professional placement between years two and three that will give you the chance to apply the theoretical principles you’ve learned to a working environment.

This degree is accredited the ACCA, which means you’ll gain exemptions from certain professional qualifying exams should you decide to study further to become a chartered accountant.

In a world of integrating global markets, the expertise you’ll get from your Brunel degree in how corporate entities are organised and managed will make you a preferred job candidate to employers in business, finance and government.

From social networks, ecommerce and government through to sensors, smart meters and mobile networks, data is being collected at an unprecedented speed and scale. But big data is of little use without 'big insight'. The skills required to develop such insight are in short supply and the shortage of skilled workers in the data analytics market is cited as a key barrier to unlocking everything that data has to offer.

The Data Science and Analytics MSc programme provides these skills, combining a strong academic degree course with hands-on experience of leading commercial technology, and the chance to gain industry certification. You will develop both your critical awareness of the very latest developments in data science and the practical skills that help you apply data science more effectively in a wide variety of sectors including finance, retail and government.

You’ll gain knowledge of key concepts and the nuances of effective data analysis. You’ll gain confidence in your own critical understanding of the challenges and issues arising from taking heterogeneous data at volume and scale, understanding what it represents, and turning that understanding into insight for business, scientific or social innovation. You’ll develop a practical understanding of the skills, tools and techniques necessary for the effective application of data science.

The course is designed to offer you the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in several data analytics tools (e.g. Hadoop, Spark, Tableau), programming languages (R, Python) and machine learning libraries.

A series of sessions in Python is offered to support students who are less familiar with programming.

You will also have the opportunity to obtain an SAS certificate such as SAS Base Programming, which is a recognised industry qualification, following a two-week SAS certification ‘boot camp’.

If you don’t want to commit to full or part-time study of the entire MSc, you can develop your educational portfolio over a longer period of time by undertaking staged study that leads to the award of Postgraduate Certi?cate (PGCert in Data Science), Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip in Data Science and Analytics) and Data Science and Analytics MSc in separate stages.

The roles that our graduates are typically recruited to within these organisations include analytics consultant, big data engineer/scientist, business analyst, clinical data scientist, data design specialist, data scientists, developer/development engineer, enterprise/technical architect, forecast analyst, marketing/customer and/or insight analyst, quantitative analyst and web analyst.

Brunel’s Women in Engineering and Computing mentoring scheme provides our female students with invaluable help and support from their industry mentors.

Who has political power? Why do they have it? To whom are they accountable? Is violent protest ever justified? If these questions evoke a response in you and raise more questions in turn, politics is the degree for you.

Politics is an exciting and dynamic subject, simulating debate and offering insight into how the ever-changing world around us works. It’s also a degree that can demonstrate your intellectual acumen and understanding of world affairs, which will be an asset in many fields of work.

The broad-based nature of the course at Brunel means you will be studying a wide breadth of modules from British politics to US foreign policy and political change. But you’ll not only be learning about politics – you’ll be analysing politics using the tools of political science to help deepen your understanding and critical thinking.

Opt for a placement year and you'll gain work experience that is highly valued by employers. Brunel students have secured placements in the Environmental Audit Committee, the House of Commons, Directorate of Gender Affairs, HM Treasury and the Competition Commission, to name only a few.

You can also opt to take part of your degree abroad in one of our partner universities in Europe, or participate in an exchange programme to China or the USA to study politics in a different part of the world whilst experiencing a new culture.

Brunel is a dynamic university choice for your politics course. You’ll be taught by politics experts who are often called on to comment on radio and television. The Brunel campus has hosted the filming of BBC’s Question Time and is a political hub during local and national elections.

Brunel politics graduates enter diverse careers. Many of our former students go into politics and the civil service and some are currently at GCHQ and military intelligence. Others work in the public and private sector like the NHS, international banks, business consultancy, law, NGOs and the media. Whichever route you chose, a politics degree with Brunel will set you up for a successful future.

Storytelling is part of every culture and reveals much about a person’s lived experience, values and aspirations within a given time.

Studying the English Literature MA at Brunel gives you the opportunity to uncover the richness of the history of English Literature – through selected periods, genres and diverse storytellers – through a set of underlying themes that act as windows into deeper understanding.

Whether your purpose is to explore a long held interest, build on previous studies or to benefit your career, studying a literature degree at Brunel will keep you close the one of the key literary capitals of the world.

Your journey will commence with an introductory module on ‘Reading, Writing and Research’ to help equip you with the required skills and competencies relevant to literary studies, so you will have the confidence to pursue self-directed study on any given topic.

You will then study four additional modules including ‘Authors’, where you will study one author or a well-recognised group of authors from a list that includes: John Keats and P.B. Shelley; the Brontes; Charles Dickens, or selected modernist authors such as Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield or postmodernist and experimental writers, B.S. Johnson and J.G. Ballard.

‘A British Literary Decade’ will immerse you in the literary and cultural aspects of one nominated decade from a range including the 1850s, 1890s, 1920s, 1930s, 1960s, 1970s or 1980s, crossing into neighbouring disciplines like history and politics along the way.

You will also have the opportunity to cover more contemporary works in ‘Postmillennial Literature’ including texts from a selected field, which includes:  Anglophile writing post 9/11; science fiction and fantasy; LGBT writing, or experimental fiction.

Finally, after a series of planning and skills workshops to prepare topic, under the guidance of a nominated supervisor, you will undertake critical reading towards a 15,000 word dissertation on an agreed area of English post-1789 literature.

Outside your classroom, you can look forward to a calendar of events and activities organised by the Brunel Centre for Contemporary Writing, including the annual Hillingdon Literary Festival: a free weekend of literary performances from internationally renowned authors, writing workshops and lively debates right here on the Brunel campus.

On Brunel’s Computer Science BSc course, we’ll help you gain the ability to develop software solutions to business problems. You’ll learn to specify, design, code, modify and test different types of software, from web-based systems to mobile solutions, in a contemporary programming paradigm. All of this will be done using an appropriate commercial grade development environment and associated database tools.

In addition, you’ll acquire in-depth knowledge of algorithms, design, programming and testing techniques. By the end of the course, you’ll have confidence in your knowledge of common system and network architectures and system development approaches, requirements capture, design methods, models, tools, and techniques.

You’ll become well-versed in implementing and testing systems and software maintenance. Key to this course is cultivating a reflective approach to project management issues arising from team-based software development.

This exciting degree course is also increasingly using technologies such as drones and robots in coursework and projects.

Our course is designed for flexibility, so if you’re not sure which route you want to go, you can select modules and specialise gradually during your time with us. You can transfer between Computer Science and Business Computing up to the start of Level 2, then, should you wish, to choose a specialism up to the start of Level 3.

We know that when you graduate, you’ll be working on large projects. That’s why one third of each year of our programmes is project-based. On Levels 1 and 2, you’ll build a software solution in a team, and in your final year you’ll carry out an individual project. You’ll also have the opportunity to showcase your projects at the annual  Made in Brunel (Software Innovation) event, with awards presented by the likes of Cisco, Sky and Xerox.

As part of your degree course, you’ll have the chance to take a year-long work placement between your second year and third year. We’ll support you in finding that all-important paid professional experience, in the UK or abroad. The feedback we’ve received is that those who have taken a placement are much more likely to find a job for which their degree was a formal requirement as it gives you a competitive advantage. Recent graduates have gone on to work for well-known names such as Accenture, Toshiba, Microsoft, British Airways, O2, and Barclays.

Our programmes are accredited by the British Computer Society, the Chartered Institute for IT, for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for registration as a Chartered IT Professional (CITP), and on behalf of the Engineering Council, for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for Incorporated Engineer (IEng) and partially meeting the academic requirement for a Chartered Engineer (CEng). 

The accreditation also allows you to apply for professional membership of the BCS after you have successfully completed your degree.

The department has been awarded an Athena SWAN Bronze, recognising our dedication to the advancement of gender equality in STEM subjects. We now have an ongoing three-year action plan to further implement strategies and improve our practices. As part of this endeavour, Brunel’s  Women in Engineering and Computing mentoring scheme provides our female students with invaluable help and support from the industry.