Bachelor of Science in Sociology (Media)

at Brunel University London United Kingdom

The Brunel Banking and Finance BSc provides students with the knowledge, skills and insights needed to effectively pursue careers in banking and financial services.

You’ll get a solid grounding in micro and macroeconomic principles, accounting practices and the workings of financial markets before studying advanced topics including real estate finance, financial regulation, risk management and how banking and financial systems operate in an international context.

You’ll also gain insight into the dynamic relationship between investors, financial markets and the institutions that enable transactions between the two.

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

You can tailor the final year of your course to specialise in an area of particular interest.

Due to globalisation, banking and finance have become growth sectors for graduate vacancies. The specialised skills and training you’ll get from your Brunel BSc will make you a preferred job candidate to employers across the industry.

All of our economics and finance undergraduate and postgraduate degrees offer the opportunity to gain professional experience through work placements.

• Placements and economics and finance internships are a great way to see if your future career is right for you.  For undergraduate courses you take your placement between the second and third years of your chosen course, you’ll have the opportunity to apply your skills in a real-life working environment, with real responsibilities.  For postgraduate courses if you're studying over two years full-time, you will take a year's work placement, or if you choose the 16 month option you take a 6-12 week placement.
• More than just a way to earn some extra money during your studies, you will get the chance to taste life as a professional before entering the graduate world.
• Depending on what suits you, your work placement can be taken in small, medium or large organisations across different sectors. Our students have recently secured placements at Morgan Stanley, the Department of Trade and Industry, and HM Treasury. You’ll have to apply for a placement like you would any other professional job but with the expert guidance of your personal tutor and our Professional Development Centre you’ll be supported every step of the way to find a role that suits you and your goals.
• During your placement, an academic member of staff from the Economics and Finance department will keep in touch, and your employer will be invited to attend a tutorial day at Brunel with you.

If studies of the mind and mental health interest you, this socially and culturally focused course may provide a rich alternative to more scientific studies in psychology and psychiatry.

Study this course and you will investigate psychological and psychiatric issues from an anthropological perspective, addressing issues at the forefront of debates in social policy, morality, personal identity, and mental health.

By considering cases from around the world you’ll explore how person, consciousness, and experience are shaped through cultural practices and political realities.

Examining world ethnography (including the UK), you’ll learn about selfhood, emotion, personality, and understandings of ‘madness’ and mental illness in cultural context.

Brunel students come from varied professional and academic backgrounds, many taking time out for professional development. If you haven’t studied anthropology before, you’ll be offered introductory modules in anthropological theory to help prepare you for the rest of the course.

Anthropology at Brunel is well-known for its focus on ethnographic fieldwork and you will be expected to get out of the library and undertake your own, original research – whether in the UK or overseas – and to present your findings in a dissertation.

Your fieldwork can be taken anywhere in the world, locally, previous students have explored psychic training, Pentecostal churches, and mental health charities, and internationally, students have explored subjects like funerals in Iran, Amazon neoshamanism, and autism programmes in Belgium.

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. 

The Brunel Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences BSc is designed for students interested in learning how sports science can be used to optimise athletic development, sport performance, as well as how it enhances health and wellbeing.

You’ll learn how the human body works on physiological, biomechanical and psychological levels and how to apply this knowledge to training methods, mental techniques and nutritional strategies that enable people to consistently perform at the upper ranges of their abilities.

Crucially, you’ll gain insight into how the mind and body respond to the demands of sport and exercise and how they react under intense conditions such as strenuous physical activity or competition.

Your studies will be supported by some of the best teaching and sports facilities in the UK that include our:

• State-of-the-art physiology, biomechanics and psychology laboratories
• World-class indoor athletics centre
• International-standard 400m six-lane athletics track with full field event facilities
• Large indoor netball hall
• Multi-use sports centre equipped with squash, basketball and netball courts, as well as a superb climbing wall.
• Members-only fitness suite featuring treadmills, cycles and rowing machines
• A weight-training area with free and fixed weights
• Grass and third-generation (3G) all-weather pitches
• Outdoor tennis courts

You'll also have the opportunity to carry out a placement as part of your degree, giving you the experience to create a stand-out CV. Our Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences BSc offers two placement options: you can choose to carry out two placements during the summer vacations within the three year degree, or a one year placement between years two and three, as part of a four year degree.

The Brunel Economics and Accounting BSc gives students the theoretical and practical skills necessary to understand and analyse economic and accounting issues that arise in business, industrial, financial or government environments.

You’ll learn the fundamental analytical techniques of micro and macroeconomics and gain a comprehensive knowledge of the principles and practices of financial and management accounting.

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 what you’ve learned to real-life situations

In your final year, you can tailor your course to specialist areas including auditing, taxation, behavioural economics and finance and the economics of labour markets.

The degree is accredited the ACCA and CIMA, which means you’ll gain exemptions from certain professional qualifying exams.

As business and finance become more complex and global, employers are on the look-out for job candidates with the analytical and technical skills needed to keep pace with the changes. Your Brunel Economy and Accounting BSc, with its focus on economic analysis, will make you a preferred prospect in the fields of accounting, business management, financial markets and corporate finance. 

The Brunel Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences (Physical Education, Coaching and Social Issues) BSc is for students who are interested in working in physical education or youth sport, developing sport in communities, helping individuals fulfil their potential in sport and health, as well as those seeking to gain a strong understanding and application of sports coaching principles and practices.

You'll explore the sociological, political, pedagogical and psychological factors that influence participation in physical education and sport, and how these relate to sports performance, physical activity, health and wellbeing. You'll learn how to plan, deliver, manage and evaluate high-quality activities and events aimed at encouraging and enabling people to get involved in sport and physical activity, from grassroots to elite level.

You’ll also explore social issues in physical education such as gender, race and religion and inclusive practice. In addition, you'll learn historical and philosophical aspects related to PE.

Your studies will be supported by some of the best teaching and sports facilities in the UK that include our:

• State-of-the-art physiology, biomechanics and psychology laboratories
• World-class indoor athletics centre
• International-standard 400m six-lane athletics track with full field event facilities
• Large indoor netball hall
• Multi-use sports centre equipped with squash, basketball and netball courts, as well as a superb climbing wall.
• Members-only fitness suite featuring treadmills, cycles and rowing machines
• A weight-training area with free and fixed weights
• Grass and third-generation (3G) all-weather pitches
• Outdoor tennis courts

You'll also have the opportunity to carry out a placement as part of your degree. This will give you the type of experience that will enable you to create a standout CV. Our Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences (Physical Education, Coaching and Social Issues) BSc offers two placement options: you can choose to carry out two placements during the summer vacations within the three year degree, or a one year placement between years two and three, as part of a four year degree.

Our Electronic and Electrical Engineering (Energy Systems) BEng degree is a modern course that has been developed to equip you with the knowledge and skills needed to work and research in electronic and electrical engineering with specialisation in sustainable electrical energy systems. 

You’ll gain a good understanding of the different engineering areas, giving you the opportunity to learn more about the fundamental engineering subjects such as design, structures, materials, fluid mechanics, electronics and maths and gain skills in technical drawing.

By specialising in energy systems you’ll learn to design energy systems and apply them to electrical energy programmes. 

Access is available to modern technical facilities including computer, electronics, and power and control laboratories where you’ll work on your experiments. The latest industry standard engineering software packages are available for you to use in dedicated computer clusters.

Brunel's BEng electronic and electrical engineering (energy systems) course is accredited by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). This professional engineering institution ensures that your engineering degree meets the academic requirement to qualify as a professional engineer. This accredited BEng degree in electronic and electrical engineering 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).

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 an engineering or technology company.

The world relies on computers and so do most businesses and organisations. Mathematics is the language of computer science so if you have the skills for both you’ll find a whole range of careers available to you in most sectors.

On this single honours course you’ll develop your mathematical and statistical knowledge and apply these skills to solve problems in computing, business and other areas.

Approximately two-thirds of the course is devoted to mathematical and statistical areas. The mathematics subjects on this course focus particularly on aspects of modern algebra that relate to computer science and also include a considerable amount of numerical analysis of mathematical problems. You have the opportunity to specialise in Level 3 so as an example, you may choose modern encryption methods as used in internet transactions.

Follow the four-year Professional Placement degree programme and you‘ll benefit from our extensive experience in helping students to find well-paid work placements with blue-chip companies. Our sandwich students find that their mathematical, computer science and transferable skills are in demand in many sectors, both in the UK and abroad.

Areas recently offering placements include: accountancy, aviation, banking, defence, finance, insurance, IT (software development, network management and design), management (public and private sector), marketing and telecommunications.

This programme will meet the educational requirements of the Chartered Mathematician designation, awarded by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, when it is followed by subsequent training and experience in employment to obtain equivalent competences to those specified by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for taught master's degrees.

On this Business Computing BSc degree course, you get to specialise in eBusiness, learning about how software and IT systems can support business transactions and drive sales. Through a mixture of theory and real-world practice, you’ll learn how to determine a dynamic mix of processes, which allow information delivery systems and users to carry out business effectively and efficiently. You’ll come to intuitively understand how an organisation’s information systems need to adapt to the changes and developments natural to growth and progress.

In addition to the compulsory business computing content you will learn about the underlying models and latest approaches used by companies in building successful eBusiness platforms.

Our course is designed for flexibility, so if you’re not sure which route you want to go down, 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, you can 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). 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.

Networks are what make up much of the modern-day working world as we become more connected both as individuals and as organisations. But with network connectivity (including cloud computing) comes a heightened requirement for security and privacy. On the Computer Science (Network Computing) BSc degree course, you’ll gain a good understanding of computer science and a grasp of the important elements of a computer system before specialising in network computing.

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.

Network computing graduates have a wide range of careers open to them. Perhaps you’ll start by becoming a general analyst or programmer in a consultancy firm. This is often just the first step towards setting up your own business.

Our course is designed for flexibility, so if you’re not sure which route you want to take, 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.