Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Sociology

at Durham University United Kingdom

Advances in fields such as Physics, Engineering, Earth Sciences or Finance are increasingly driven by experts in computational techniques. Notably, people skilled to write code for the most powerful computers in the world and skilled to process the biggest data sets in the world can truly make a difference.

The MSc in Scientific Computing and Data Analysis offers an application-focused course to deliver these skills with three interwoven strands:

• Computer Science underpinnings of scientific computing (algorithms, data structures, implementation techniques, and computer tool usage)
• Mathematical aspects of data analysis
• Implementation and application of fundamental techniques in a domain specialisation (presently astrophysics, particle physics, financial mathematics, or earth and environmental sciences).

Through MISCADA’s FinMath specialisation, students will be introduced to the mathematical principles behind modern financial markets, and elements of programming and communication in the context of the financial industry. Financial mathematics draws on tools from probability theory, statistics, partial differential equations, and scientific computing, and is widely used in investment banks, hedge funds, insurance companies, corporate treasuries, and regulatory agencies to solve such problems as derivative pricing, portfolio selection, and risk management.

Durham’s Psychology and Anthropology Departments pride themselves on excellence in both teaching and research. The breadth of complementary research strengths across the two Departments means that you are guaranteed to be taught by staff who are actively engaged in the interaction of psychological and anthropological approaches, and are leading figures in their field of research.

In Anthropology, you will use perspectives from human biology, cultural evolution, animal behaviour, and human evolution to illuminate inquiry into the mind and behaviour of past and present human and primate populations. You will learn how anthropology and psychology provide complementary and contrasting perspectives on what it is to be human, as well as a variety of quantitative and qualitative ways of addressing major questions. The interface of anthropology and psychology explicitly integrates intercultural, international and global issues. For example, in anthropology’s traditional focus on cultural diversity and the burgeoning recognition of psychology’s need to address cross-cultural issues and move away from studies biased by Western Educated Industrialised and Rich (WEIRD) samples.

The degree provides the opportunity to develop extensive subject-specific, interdisciplinary, and transferable skills. The course follows the British Psychological Society(BPS) guidelines with an extensive range of options in the final year, drawing both from work in fundamental scientific research and in applied areas of psychology and anthropology. You may choose to take modules that deepen your understanding of a smaller number of anthropologically and psychologically relevant topics or choose to take a more broad and varied selection. Several coherent pathways – for example in animal behaviour, infant and child development, and health – are possible, using complementary modules from the two departments.

Excellent research facilities are available, including a virtual reality suite, developmental testing facilities, and EEG labs (in psychology), as well as extensive collections of fossil hominin casts and material culture artefacts from around the globe, a sleep lab, hormone lab, and field station for primatology in South Africa (in Anthropology). You are encouraged to get involved in research being carried out by your lecturers, thus gaining a deeper and more hands-on understanding of the issues you are learning about in your degree, and adding to your contextual experience.

This course involves the study of historical and systematic theology from a range of Christian perspectives. Durham has long-established strengths in both Greek and Latin patristics, the medieval Church and Reformation, contemporary Catholic and Anglican theology, theological ethics, and philosophical theology.

Geophysics is the application of physical principles to the study of the structure and dynamics of the Earth and increasingly other planets. Geophysics has many practical applications and forms an essential part of the economic exploitation of hydrocarbon and mineral resources. Geophysicists are also involved with assessing and mitigating natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis.

The Geophysics with Geology degree shows progression from the first year through to the third year. In the first year, you share the core modules with the other degree courses, but it also includes additional core modules which specialise in Mathematics and Physics. In the second and third years, you deal with material that is specialist, numerically based and at the cutting-edge of geophysical research.

Graduates from this degree have secured employment across the geoscience sector, within the mineral exploration and extraction industries, in petroleum exploration companies, and with environmental and hydro-geological industries. The advanced quantitative skills developed during this course can provide a strong base for securing employment outside geoscience, for example, in finance, insurance and banking.

Our MSc programmes in Economics will give you the opportunity to equip yourself with the necessary skills and knowledge to pursue a career in economics and related disciplines.

The programme consists of a set of core and elective modules, culminating in a practice-based business project or a research-based dissertation.

Core and elective modules:
You will study:

• Advanced Macroeconomics
• Advanced Microeconomics
• Behavioural Finance and Economics
• Experimental Economics and Finance

The MA Social Research Methods is part of a suite of advanced postgraduate methods-based courses delivered across the University faculties. The MA aims to provide core accessible and inclusive cross-disciplinary advanced research methods training across the social sciences with specific subject-specific training in research practices related to a chosen field of social policy, criminology, sociology or social work.

The course will equip you with the research and employability skills required to transition successfully to enhanced careers in academia, commercial companies, public sector, non-governmental organisations or other sectors. This degree will provide academic rigour and coherence, whilst allowing a degree of flexibility and choice within the chosen course in terms of disciplinary focus and advance research approaches.

The course covers conceptual and practical underpinnings and implications of research, looking at various research techniques and the rationale behind them. It will enable you to develop essential skills in both quantitative and qualitative work and to apply those skills to social research in a particular subject area (criminology, social policy, sociology, social work).

The BEng Civil Engineering degree is a high-quality three-year degree designed to offer you the knowledge and skills necessary to join engineering teams on graduation. It is complementary to the four-year Durham MEng, and transfer is possible between the courses up to the end of the second year. It is important to highlight that you also can transfer between the different Engineering programmes that we offer (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, Electronic, etc.) up until the end of the second year, provided that you meet the relevant progression requirements. We believe that students should make an informed decision about their futures and allowing our students to transfer between programmes, once they understand the different disciplines, demonstrates our commitment to this and the Department’s General Engineering philosophy.

In the first two years, the BEng covers the same broad base of engineering education as the MEng degree. The BEng prepares you for an exciting career in modern engineering, with the flexibility to respond to changing technologies.

The course is designed as a research preparation masters. It is intended to encourage you to be intellectually ambitious by inducting you into a community of historians. It invites you to understand the relationship between your own specialist field and the historical discipline in general as well as to communicate with wider audiences. You will feel sufficiently confident in your own disciplinary identity and mastery of the subject to be able to converse with those in other fields.

The course is taught with an emphasis on disciplinary training supplied by the Department’s subject specialists with expertise in an outstanding range of areas (Europe, Britain, North America, Africa, China and Japan) and interdisciplinary engagement, while offering opportunities for supported independent study. You will be able – and are indeed encouraged – to access and use Durham’s exceptional cluster of libraries, archives, and special collections.

All students on the MA in History are required to take the team-taught core module Themes, Reading and Sources (30 credits) which runs throughout Michaelmas (Autumn). Depending on whether you opt for the 60-credit Dissertation pathway or the 90-credit Dissertation pathway, you will also take either 3 or 2 optional modules (each worth 30 credits) which run either in Michaelmas or Epiphany or throughout both terms. The options may also be language, skills and content modules, provided by other centres, courses and departments with the consent of all parties concerned. All these elements have embedded within them a range of content, subject-specific skills, and key skills.

This course is designed for students with an undergraduate degree in a subject other than anthropology who would like to prepare for research in socio-cultural anthropology or for a career requiring expertise in anthropology.

High profile social anthropologist researchers at Durham, with experience of conducting fieldwork all around the world, introduce you to both classical and contemporary writing and research in the discipline. There is equal emphasis on theoretical and methodological questions, and plenty of opportunities to apply this new knowledge to issues of pressing social concern.

The full-time course consists of two terms of teaching, during which you are introduced to the range of research questions and methods used in social or cultural anthropology, and a dissertation, involving the design, development, and implementation of an independent research project. You will work closely with academic staff from our highly respected Social Anthropology Research Group receiving enhanced levels of support as part of the ‘conversion’ to anthropology, including fortnightly small group meetings with the course tutor, and have the opportunity to become involved in active research projects.

Advances in fields such as Physics, Engineering, Earth Sciences or Finance are increasingly driven by experts in computational techniques. Notably, people skilled to write code for the most powerful computers in the world and skilled to process the biggest data sets in the world can truly make a difference.

The MSc in Scientific Computing and Data Analysis offers an application-focused course to deliver these skills with three interwoven strands:

• Computer Science underpinnings of scientific computing (algorithms, data structures, implementation techniques, and computer tool usage)
• Mathematical aspects of data analysis
• Implementation and application of fundamental techniques in a domain specialisation (presently Astrophysics, Particle Physics, Financial Mathematics, or Earth and Environmental Sciences