Master of Science in Finance (Accounting and Finance)

at Durham University United Kingdom

This is a four-year multidisciplinary degree in which the compulsory Chinese language and culture modules will be taught at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures (MLaC) and in the Department of History. You may choose a selection of other modules relevant to the study of China from other departments, including Anthropology, Education, Government and International Affairs, Economics, and Theology and Religious Studies.

In addition, you may choose to take additional modules offered by MLaC including European languages and Japanese. All students will spend their third year studying the Chinese language at a university in China. Students are not expected to have any previous knowledge of Chinese, but a pathway is available if you have an A level or equivalent qualification in Chinese.

Our MSc Finance programmes are designed to provide you with rigorous training at the frontier of research, as well as the advanced analytical and technical skills that are highly sought after by global employers and, if you wish to continue your studies, by world-leading PhD programmes.

Our MSc programmes have partnership status with the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute (CFA). The CFA is the world’s premier association for investment professionals and the accepted benchmark for technical excellence in financial markets. It guarantees you benefit from a curriculum of the highest standards and enables you to participate in the CFA Global Investment Research Challenge, as well as CFA employer network events and scholarships.

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

Core Modules

• Banking and Financial Intermediation
• Bank Management
• Financial Technologies I
• Financial Technologies II
• Python for Finance
• Econometric Methods

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 MSc Business Analytics course is intended to provide premium Masters-level education and training in relevant areas of contemporary business analytics in a supportive research-led interdisciplinary learning environment.

The broad aims are:

• To develop advanced and systematic understanding of the complexity of data, including the sources of data relevant to business, alongside appropriate analysis techniques
• To enable you to critically review and apply relevant business analytics knowledge to practical situations
• To develop a critical awareness of current issues in business analytics which is informed by leading research and practice in the field
• To develop a conceptual understanding of existing research and scholarship to enable the identification of new or revised approaches to business analytics practice
• To develop creativity in the application of knowledge, together with a practical understanding of how established, advanced techniques of research and enquiry are used to develop and interpret knowledge in business analytics
• To develop the ability to conduct research into business analytics issues that requires familiarity with a range of business data, research sources and appropriate methodologies and ethical issues
• To develop advanced conceptual abilities and analytical skills in order to evaluate the rigour and validity of published research and assess its relevance to new situations
• To extend the ability to communicate effectively both orally and in writing, using a range of media.

The main objective of the course is to educate you in the key engineering aspects of electronic and electrical engineering, enabling you to undertake responsible, creative, challenging and stimulating posts in industry or research.

The course covers the key areas of electronic and electrical engineering. In addition to the technical background provided in these subjects, hands-on experience is gained through a major individual Research and Development project, a group design project and a supporting laboratory programme.

Our BA (Hons) Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) is a prestigious programme offering you the opportunity to explore three subjects – their connections, influences and impact. You’ll gain an understanding of how and why they’ve been so inextricably linked historically, and the ways in which they’ve developed and diverged over the course of the last two centuries, both in content and in method.

Throughout the course you’ll investigate the subjects in theory and practice, gaining the knowledge and skills to pursue different lines of inquiry and interrogate your own ideas. All this provides a rigorous academic framework which is highly-regarded as excellent preparation for a successful career, no matter what path you take.

This course combines a sound basis of advanced knowledge and understanding in the broader and more disparate field of International Studies with the opportunity to choose optional specialist areas of study from among those offered in the School, and other schools such as Modern Languages and Cultures. The particular interests reflected in the choice of options may then be developed through the researching and writing of a dissertation.

Throughout the course, you will gain advanced knowledge and understanding of:

• The extent to which the international community has developed and the driving forces shaping its development
• Factors determining humanitarian interventions
• The processes of globalisation in the political, economic, cultural and scientific fields
• The governance role of international organisations
• How the degree of integration of countries into the international political and economic system varies and the determinants of those variations
• Historical and/or contemporary issues and debates in the politics and political economy of specific states and/or areas and/or international institutions and organisations
• Regime analysis and the concept of soft power governance
• An appropriate topic in international politics of your choice

The MSc Cognitive Neuroscience is aimed at students who are seeking to build up knowledge and practical experience of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology. Students from our course go on to pursue careers in research or research related disciplines but also careers in industry or clinical psychology.

The MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at Durham University stands out because it has many practical elements, like workshops and lab placements, that allow you to experience research rather than just hearing about it. As the theoretical background to, and techniques of Cognitive Neuroscience are rarely available to students at undergraduate level, the main objective of this MSc is to provide you with detailed theoretical and practical knowledge of Cognitive Neuroscience and Cognitive Neuroscience techniques that are most relevant right now. This wide-ranging knowledge will make you an extremely strong candidate for future research or research related positions, and will enable you to engage with broad research programmes, utilising a range of techniques.

The BEng Electronic 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 MA in Visual Culture at Durham is a distinctive interdisciplinary course that invites you to develop your knowledge and understanding of the visual arts and of visual culture. To study visual arts and culture is a way of paying attention to phenomena that are everywhere. The concept of ‘visual culture’ acknowledges the pervasive nature of visual phenomena, and signals openness towards both the breadth of objects and images, and the range of theoretical and methodological perspectives needed to understand them adequately.

Drawing upon research strengths across the departments that contribute to the course, the MA in Visual Culture encourages a broad geographical and chronological scope, while allowing you to engage with a wide range of visual phenomena, including fine art, film, photography, architecture, and scientific and medical imaging practices.

The importance of critical visual literacy in the contemporary world cannot be exaggerated. ‘The illiterate of the future’, wrote the Bauhaus artist and theoretician László Moholy-Nagy, ‘will be the person ignorant of the camera as well as of the pen’. This observation was made in the 1920s, when photography was first used in the periodical press and in political propaganda. The rich visual world of the early twentieth century pales in comparison with the visual saturation that now characterises everyday experience throughout the developed societies and much of the developing world. But the study of visual culture is by no means limited to the twentieth century. Turning our attention to past cultures with a particular eye to the significance of visual objects of all kinds yields new forms of knowledge and understanding.