Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Politics and Economics

at Durham University United Kingdom

The LLB degree is a highly flexible three-year, full-time course. There are approximately 300 students on each year of the LLB. While providing a solid grounding in the main areas of English and Welsh law, it also allows for individual specialisation through a variety of optional modules offered by the School and other departments in the University.

The degree course provides the opportunity to obtain a Qualifying Law Degree as recognised by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Bar Standards Board. (Please note: whether or not a degree exempts a student from the academic stage of training to be a solicitor or barrister depends on the modules that the student studies. In practice, virtually all of our students choose to study the modules that are required by the Law Society and Bar Council, and do gain a Qualifying Law Degree.)

Study abroad
The LLB with a Year Abroad (YA) comprises all of the content of the three-year regular LLB, plus an exciting additional year spent at one of our European or international partners during the third year of study. At present, Durham Law School has partnerships with universities in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy and Singapore.

This course provides you with the systematic knowledge and intellectual tools to critically review developments in the theory and practice of international relations. It will enable you to evaluate in a sophisticated and critical fashion concepts, theories and paradigms within the broad field of international relations, drawing lessons from empirical studies involving both quantitative and qualitative investigations.

You will develop the ability to deploy research strategies and methods in an appropriately advanced fashion to critically evaluate current research and advanced scholarship. Each study route aims to provide advanced knowledge and understanding of the dynamics, including cultural and local political and ideological factors, which shape the contemporary international relations of the relevant area.

The course also provides an opportunity for studying international relations in comparative and historical perspective taking account of regional specific political and economic factors.

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

Our focused MSc in Management is designed to prepare you for becoming a successful manager. You will cover at an advanced level, the fundamental subjects needed to manage a business within a complex changing environment.

We are passionate not only about improving sport performance, but also reducing inequality, promoting social justice, and ensuring better health and wellbeing through sport, exercise and physical activity. Studying on the BA (Hons) Sport, Exercise and Physical Activity with us at Durham will enable you to explore a broad range of topics across the spectrum from grassroots to elite sport, and also across the varied connections between sport and contemporary issues such as inequality, the environment, crime, and obesity.

Across your three years of study, you will engage in a variety of core and optional modules in the social science disciplines of sport sociology, sport policy and sports development. The flexible design of the degree will also allow you to select and experience modules associated with other areas of the sport and exercise sciences, including physiology, psychology, and physical activity, nutrition and health.

Your research and academic study skills will be developed through bespoke modules, and during the final year dissertation project you will engage in deeper investigation of a sport, exercise or physical activity topic that particularly interests you. In addition, our employability-focused course provides further opportunities for you to take sport and exercise leadership and placement modules, as well as open modules from other departments across the University.

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
• Environmental Economics and Policy
• Natural Resource Management

This MA is designed for those who wish to explore the social dimensions of risk and resilience. The Department of Geography is especially well-suited to examine these in relation to environmental hazards, climate vulnerability and security-related risk, but you are encouraged to develop your own thinking in relation to any aspect of risk research, including broader environmental change, disaster risk reduction, risk and insurance, risk and health, risk and migration, risk and social policy, risk and governance, borders and terrorism. This course foregrounds the existence of multiple ways of understanding risk, from risk as an objective phenomenon managed through scientific tools (e.g. in the case of environmental hazards) to risk as a social construct and a political technique (e.g. in the case of risk and security).

Dealing with risks as a function of both the natural and social environments we live in, the course responds to the growing realisation that many risks are being created through social processes bound to questions of security and vulnerability, including the ways that risk techniques are emerging and being employed as a means of securing uncertain futures.

The BSc Environmental Geosciences course seeks to develop specialist geoscience students for careers in the environmental sector, further study or research. Graduates of our degree go on to work for companies in a range of relevant areas including environmental management, water management, energy, mining and geotechnics.

You may also go on to study for an MSc and PhD in more specialist areas including environmental geochemistry, hydrology, hydrogeology and geotechnics. The course has a special emphasis on employability and benefits from consultations with experts from the industry including Amec, Atkins, the Environment Agency, English Nature and Mott MacDonald.

Education Studies is a broad multi-disciplinary degree, designed for the intellectually and practically curious. From the philosophical foundations of schooling, to the political implications of policy, education is a vast field that has multiple avenues to approach a seemingly straightforward subject. Our degree goes far beyond any classroom and considers education, people and their relationship to the ever-changing world.

The breadth of our modules allows for the creation of pathways through the course. This may be linked to one of the degree's four strands of educational expertise: pragmatic; sociological-philosophical; psychological; and international-intercultural education. You will also study modules in the Department of Geography.

This is a degree offered in collaboration with other departments in the Faculty of Social Sciences. It is designed to provide a strong all round training in research methods allied to further specialisation within the fields of politics, international relations and security for those intending to go on to register for a PhD. As such it implements the ESRC research training guidelines for '1+3' PhD students, and includes compulsory elements in a wide variety of techniques including statistics and quantitative methods, but contains less subject-specific content than the other MA courses.

The Durham MSW is a 21 month course engaging you with the knowledge, skills and values that underpin social work practice with individuals, groups and communities. Academic study is complemented by two practice placements with different service user groups. Practice experience of statutory interventions with children and families or ‘vulnerable adults’ is complemented by opportunities for innovative practice in the voluntary and independent sectors in areas such as family justice, homelessness, substance use, domestic violence, sexual exploitation, community interventions and self-advocacy. With strong involvement of service users, carers and practice partners throughout the course, the MSW provides strong foundations for practice in any field of social work.