Bachelor of Science in Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences (Physical Education, Coaching and Social Issues)

at Brunel University London United Kingdom

Anthropology of Childhood, Youth and Education MSc was the first degree of its kind to be established and is still unique in its deep anthropological exploration on what it is to be a child or to be young.

As part of the course, you will look at historic perceptions of childhood in the West to the development of European rights of protection, compared to experiences of childhood in other parts of the world, like the street children of Brazil.

In a module on learning and education you will compare physical development stages, including how learning is acquired and universal patterns of play, to the range of ways children are prepared or educated to fit cultural expectations.

The course’s key organising principle is that understanding children requires the study of how their relations with others – peers, older and younger children, parents, teachers and other adults – inform their practices, identities and world views.

The course addresses the following issues from an anthropological perspective:-

• Do children of ‘different cultures’ live ‘different worlds’?
• How does education impact upon children’s worlds and upon social and cultural practices more broadly?
• How do the everyday processes of learning – both formal and informal – help to shape children’s ideas of and engagement with society at large?
• What is the role of schools in the transmission and acquisition of cultural values to children and youth?
• Why are adults’ ideas about childhood and youth so important for what children learn and aspire to become?

The distinctiveness of this degree derives from an anthropological approach that focuses on the importance of children’s and youth’s perspectives, on the role that education (formal and informal) plays in children’s learning processes, and in the transmission and acquisition of cultural knowledge.

Anthropology at Brunel is well-known for its focus on ethnographic fieldwork. As well as undertaking rigorous intellectual training, 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.

In recent years, Brunel students have undertaken fieldwork in locations across the world, including India, Mexico, Bolivia, Papua New Guinea, China, Nepal, Peru, Morocco, and New Zealand as well as within the UK and the rest of Europe.

The Entrepreneurship and Innovation BSc has been specifically created to help you put learning into action while you study by creating your own start-up business. 

Through a series of specialist modules in your second and third year (including your final year project), you will develop entrepreneurial skills and a nimble approach to business and innovation. You’ll gain confidence in your acumen and become quick to recognise and evaluate new business opportunities while calculating risk. The hands-on, practice-based learning of the course is key to this. You’ll create, run and grow a real-life enterprise as part of a group consisting of up to five students. By learning through doing, you’ll be able to apply theory very early on in the degree course to solve social and economic problems.

Along the way, you’ll learn from academics and receive support from professional business mentors who will help you to get the most out of your degree while developing your start-up. There are lots of resources available to you that can help you shape your degree into what you want it to be:

• The Brunel Innovation Hub offers expert advice and funding on student start-ups
• Through the Co-Innovate programme, you can opt to collaborate with an SME and help them solve a real business problem as part of your final year project
• You can choose to take a work placement in your third year (find out more on our work placement year page) or focus on developing your start-up
• We make sure that you have access to a variety of activities and events to challenge your self-starter mentality including the Mayor's Entrepreneur Competition

Before you get there though, your first year will be an introduction to general business and management through six compulsory modules that will provide you with a good understanding of theory and practice. The emphasis will be on developing your commercial awareness and preparation for new business creation, as well as for a work placement if you have opted to take one (you can opt to use your placement year to develop your enterprise too).

Storytelling is part of every culture and reveals much about a person’s lived experience, values and aspirations within a given time. If reading is a pleasure and creative writing very much a part of you, then an English degree with creative writing might appeal.

If you’re ready to explore more widely, think more deeply and consider how you, as a reader, are placed in relation to a text and how that affects your interpretation, you’ve come to the right place.

Brunel offers one of the most highly regarded creative writing courses in the UK, with many staff members active as novelists, writers for performance, or as cultural critics.Through them you will learn and practice the fundamentals of writing in a variety of forms including poetry and film.

After a first year of introductory writing modules with options in literature to develop your critical reading, your exploration in English and creative writing is very much down to your own interests.

In years two and three a wealth of optional modules await you, covering every period and genre in literature from Shakespeare to Austen, comedy to horror and world literature, alongside further writing options in journalism and modern fiction.

Throughout your course you will be encouraged to express your own thoughts and creativity in your coursework and seminars, which will help you to grow as a critic and writer.

English with Creative Writing BA will equip you with personal skills employers’ prize in graduates – exceptional written and verbal communication and the ability to work collaboratively in teams. At Brunel you will be able to develop these in abundance.

Opt for a placement year and you will gain real-world work experience while you study which will further increase your attractiveness to employers when you graduate.

Outside of your classroom, you can look forward to 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 campus.

The Business Computing (Social Media) BSc course looks at the ways that social media has transformed how we connect and how we do business in the 21st century. You’ll study how the internet has rapidly evolved to accommodate services and technologies which can be used by companies as commercial tools. In your final year, we’ll take a closer look at applications integral to supporting business such as Skype, Facebook and Twitter.

Through a mixture of theory and real-world practice, you’ll learn how to assess organisational problems and apply solutions. We’ll teach you 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.

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.

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

Opt for a one-year work placement while you study to gain real-world technical and soft skills which will set you apart from the competition after you graduate from your Computer Science degree.

• All of our undergraduate computing courses come with the option of undertaking a year’s placement out in the industry. This means that you have the opportunity to experience a real working environment and develop your softer skills like presenting, negotiating and working to a specific brief and tight deadlines.
• A dedicated placement tutor from the Professional Development Centre will work with you to help secure your work placement, which could be in market, product or research development areas. Previous students have taken their placement year in companies such as Microsoft, BMW, GlaxoSmithKline, IBM, and Xerox.

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.

The Brunel Economics BSc combines a thorough grounding in economic theory with the practical skills needed to apply that knowledge to business, industrial, financial or government environments.

You’ll learn how markets operate from microeconomic and macroeconomic perspectives and how trade and business priorities shape the ways societies function.  Special attention will be given to financial marketins and the banking sector, as well as an introduction to accounting.

Further, you’ll develop the analytical, quantitative, statistical and computing skills used to predict how societies, governments, businesses and households will respond to events, trends and market behaviour.

You will study statistics and econometrics and develop skills in data presentation, analysis and modelling.  This training will use 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 hands-on experience in a real-life working environment.

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

Our economics undergraduate degree is accredited by ACCA and CIMA, and graduates will receive exemptions from professional papers should they wish to continue their study to become a chartered accountant.

The analytical, quantitative and transferable skills you’ll gain from your Brunel degree are highly valued by employers and will prepare you for a wide range of career and postgraduate study options in the areas of economics, business and finance.

Our Aerospace Engineering BEng degree is an exciting, hands-on specialist course that has been developed to equip you with the knowledge and understanding to meet the real world needs of the global aerospace industry.

You will be introduced to fundamental engineering subjects such as structures, materials, fluids, and maths, and gain skills in technical drawing. You’ll then learn about the principles of aircraft design and progress to specialist subjects such as propulsion systems, and flight testing and analysis.

You’ll have access to a range of technical facilities including our aerospace/aviation laboratory, full-motion engineering flight simulator, supersonic and subsonic wind tunnels, materials and structure testing laboratory, and 3D printing in the digital fabrication workshop. Industry standard specialist software for aircraft design is available for you to use 24 hours a day in high-performance computing clusters.

During your time at Brunel, you will benefit from guest lectures delivered by industry professionals who present a valuable insight into current, challenging topics in the field of aerospace. There are also planned visits to engineering and manufacturing companies where you’ll see first-hand the latest breakthroughs in development and technology for future aerospace systems. In addition, you have the advantage of Brunel’s close location to London’s Heathrow Airport for site visits as well as project opportunities, and placement and employment options.

Our BEng aerospace engineering course is accredited by both the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). These professional bodies ensure that your engineering degree meets the academic requirement to qualify as a professional engineer. This accredited BEng degree in aerospace 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). 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 aerospace engineering sector.

As an extracurricular activity, there is the opportunity to be part of a student-led initiative involving the design and build of an unmanned aircraft vehicle and participating in the IMechE industry-sponsored UAS Challenge (Unmanned Aircraft Systems Challenge).

Design at Brunel is all about realising fantastic ideas in the real world. Our Product Design Engineering BSc degree is for creative thinkers who are also comfortable with mathematics and who enjoy deeper analysis of functional and technical design challenges, principally focused on industrially-manufactured products. The course spans design and engineering, meaning you can develop products that both look good and work well.

There is a lot of project-based learning to test your skills and you’ll see the outcome of your design from concept to making the actual product. This means you’ll be able to build a great portfolio of your best-quality projects, academic and industry briefs, and case studies, during your studies.

You’ll have workshop training and will use industry-standard equipment and software to develop quality hands-on skills to become a maker. Independent access is available to modern facilities that include dedicated design studios, digital sketching, extensive prototyping workshops, and electronics and digital fabrication labs. The practical knowledge you gain is transferable to industry and provides a head start for your future career as a designer and design making in the modern world.

Our product design engineering course is accredited by the Institution of Engineering Designers (IED) and can be studied full-time over three years, or four years with a placement year.

The placement year helps you to prepare for the world of work and you’ll have a year’s worth of invaluable professional experience when you graduate. Our students have worked in both small innovation start-ups and multinational organisations such as Dyson, Jaguar Land Rover, Philips, Procter & Gamble, and Reckitt Benckiser. 

Our students have the opportunity to add another dimension to their university experience by spending a term or a year in one of our partner universities via our exchange programme: Politecnico di Milano in Italy; Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, San Francisco State University in USA and Institut Superieur de Design, ISD Bubika in France.

Meeting the increasing energy demands of growing populations and developing societies while reducing the use of fossil fuels are crucial challenges facing the global energy industry. 

Brunel's Renewable Energy Engineering MSc gives graduates and engineering professionals interested in finding sustainable solutions to climate change and energy security the theoretical and practical skills needed to pursue careers in the growing field of renewable energy technology.

Along with a solid grounding in the core principles of energy production, you’ll get detailed knowledge of renewable energy technologies and systems, including solar, wind, tidal, wave, hydro, geothermal, biomass and hydrogen.

You’ll also look at the economic and environmental impact of renewable systems and at the legislative, planning and technical considerations of integrating them into the power grid.

We offer two study options. You can choose 1 year full-time or 3 years via our distance learning programme. 

This course is accredited by the Institution of Mechanical Engineering (IMechE) and the Energy Institute (EI), which means your postgraduate engineering degree will put you on course to gain Chartered Engineer (CEng) status in the UK. 

Throughout your studies you’ll have use of our state-of-the-art laboratory facilities and 24-hour access to industry-standard specialist software for engineering design at dedicated computer clusters on campus, so you’ll have the opportunity and equipment to explore ideas and tackle problems.

As the renewable energy sector grows, so does the need for individuals capable of planning, implementing and managing new renewable energy projects. Your Brunel MSc will give you those skills and put you on course for a rewarding career in the field or further research.

Our Chemical Engineering BEng degree is an innovative course that has been developed to equip you with a broad range of knowledge and skills to meet the needs of the chemical and biochemical industry.

The course has been developed according to the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) accreditation guidelines. This innovative approach means modern subjects are taught and delivered through flipped classrooms, problem-based learning and virtual reality.

Throughout your studies, you’ll have access to a new, modern laboratory with equipment and rigs for your experimental work. The latest industry standard engineering software packages are available for you to use in the purpose-built computer laboratories.

Our BEng chemical engineering 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 opt for the placement year, you could find yourself making a difference in the real world working in energy, pharmaceutical or consumer goods.

Brunel Engineers is an annual exhibition that showcases our engineering talent at its finest. It’s a great way for you to network with key engineering professionals and show them the innovative, creative and enterprising work you have produced during your time at Brunel.

National salary surveys consistently place chemical engineers at the top of the engineering pay scales, meaning you will be studying for a lucrative and successful career with our degree.