Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Music and Sound Design

at Manchester Metropolitan University United Kingdom

Sport and exercise are more sophisticated than ever before. From the impact on our bodies to the impact on our communities, our understanding of the subject is growing every day. With that growth comes a whole range of specialist fields and niche subjects, not to mention a variety of career paths. This master's course can prepare you for those possibilities, offering the mix of critical thinking, expert knowledge and professional skills vital for new areas of health, exercise intervention and sports education.

Networked computers run our world. From homes to hospitals, airports to banks and all stops in between, everything is connected – but these systems are susceptible to infiltration and attack. On our MSc Cyber Security course, you’ll gain the expertise to become part of the defence.

By learning to design, implement and manage computer-based systems security on this master's, you’ll develop the skills and confidence to succeed in a wide range of cyber security roles. This could include security designer, ethical hacker, and digital forensics officer.

Starting with the fundamentals, you’ll gain a broad understanding of the different levels of computer and network security. You’ll then explore both the technical aspects and the logistics of planning and implementing network security management. And how to investigate systems after a breach.

You will also complete a master's project. While you’ll have plenty of support along the way, it’s a solo research project designed to develop confidence, autonomy and self-sufficiency – qualities that can take you far in the workplace.

We aim to train you to become a specialist in a field with opportunities in virtually every sector – with everything that means for your future career prospects.

Placement options

Strengthen your skillset by spending time in industry on a placement year, applying the skills you’ve learned throughout your academic studies in a practical, real-world environment. It’s an excellent opportunity to develop a professional career development plan and gain transferable workplace skills that can boost your employability.

Following completion of the taught elements of your MSc course, you can gain additional practice credits by working for a minimum of 36 weeks and a maximum of 42 weeks in an industrial setting, relevant to your course.

It’s your responsibility to search and apply for advertised placement opportunities, but you’ll be supported by academic staff and the University’s Careers and Employability Service to find a placement that is suited to you and your career ambitions. However, not all students can be guaranteed a placement.

All placements are approved and monitored in accordance with the University’s Institutional Code of Practice for Placement and Work?Based Learning. For international students, this includes additional checks on study visas to ensure the appropriate visa status.

Right from the start, our product design engineering degree is all about developing your creativity and problem-solving skills. Even the introduction is a team-based design-and-build challenge – reflecting the kind of project-based, hands-on approach to learning you’ll experience throughout your time with us.

It’s a degree that provides the specialist knowledge and expertise required for a career in commercial product design, introducing you to industry-relevant methodologies, materials and production methods. You’ll also look at the influence on the design of history, culture, markets, materials and lifestyles. And in our specialist laboratories, you’ll get to grips with some of the latest technologies, such as 3D printing and rapid prototyping.

More generally, you’ll learn to look at the world around you through the eyes of a designer, as you establish the fundamentals of design and technology, together with the relationship that products have with their users and their environment.

Study product design engineering with us and in your final year you’ll be ready to put these skills into practice in a new product design challenge and an individual project. You’ll then have the chance to showcase your work in front of industry representatives at the department’s degree show as you look to kick-start your career in this challenging and rewarding field.

The School of Digital Art's (SODA) Games Art course aims to empower you with the knowledge and skills to create immersive art for games and the interactive experiences of the future. It will explore games art in a range of professional contexts, through interdisciplinary investigations in imaginative concept art, dynamic character design, and immersive world-building. It will synthesise industry-standard tools, techniques and processes with emerging technologies, disruptive research and design thinking.

As a Games Art student you will be part of the School of Digital Arts and will be based within a brand new purpose-built building, equipped with the latest emerging technologies to enable you to develop industry-standard skills for creating and researching content across the latest digital platforms.

SODA is well positioned within Manchester for building a network and developing your research and practice in the media, games and digital tech industries. It is also home to staff from a wide range of disciplines who are research active and experts in their chosen areas. They enjoy well-established links to the wider creative media, arts and digital tech industries in Manchester, nationally and internationally.

The exciting interdisciplinary nature of the course may involve collaborative opportunities with students on other SODA courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, from faculties across the university, such as Arts and Humanities and the Department of Computing and Maths in the Faculty of Science and Engineering.

Supported by guest lectures from international artists, industry practitioners and academics, you will position your work within wider professional and global contexts to develop an innovative, creative practice and research projects.

From clean energy to clean water, advanced materials provide the building blocks of innovation in a vast range of sectors and applications. As a materials chemist, you may design and develop intelligent products for areas such as health, energy, mobility, and communication, as well as environment and climate management.

Our MSc Advanced Materials offers the chance to get to grips with materials chemistry including the design, analysis, and characterisation of materials. With a multi-disciplinary approach, we offer a fascinating combination of chemistry and project management to develop your professional skills and prepare you to join the next generation of materials scientists.

The course is suited to talented chemists and scientists with a passion for analysing and creating innovative materials. With a core interest in materials chemistry, on this course, you’ll develop an in-depth understanding of the relationship between the structure and performance of different materials, the fundamental principles driving the development of innovative products, and strategies for the design and development of novel materials.

Interested in being an influencer in a major corporation? Or mentoring people to overcome challenging situations at work? Or perhaps you want to coach leaders of charities and public organizations?

Business psychology is an emerging topic in the working world. Performance, excellence, talent management, mental health – they’re not just buzzwords, they’re driving a new approach to doing business.

This unique course lets you combine your interests in human behaviour and business operations. You don’t need any psychology or business knowledge when you join us – just curiosity and a willingness to learn. We’ll go over everything from scratch, introducing you to the business environment, and helping you develop the academic and professional skills you’ll need to succeed.

Counselling and psychotherapy are terms for a wide variety of evidence-based talking and listening approaches which apply established theories to promote psychological change.

Alongside the main discipline of psychology, each year of this course offers specialist units where you’ll study the fields of counselling and psychotherapy.

Our course also covers all core elements of psychological study as required by the British Psychological Society (BPS), from lifespan development, neuropsychology, and research methods, to social and critical, and abnormal psychology.

In addition to theory, you’ll also learn basic practical counselling skills. Some of these skills may include how to offer acceptance, empathic listening, questioning techniques and how to develop practitioner resilience. You’ll mostly learn through role-play in pairs and small groups, listening, observing and giving feedback to your peers.

BA (Hons) Fine Art is a studio-based program that provides students with the platform to confidently enter the professional world of the artist and arts professional. Students will actively investigate universal approaches and practices in contemporary fine art that will test their knowledge, creativity and understanding. The program is taught by professional artists that are actively engaged in contemporary practice and will therefore will encourage students to explore the broader social, political and community context to define a personal mode of study that will equip them to continue their development post-degree.

The wide range of teaching approaches, facilities and opportunities will support students to acquire skills and varied methodologies that allow them to either specialise or engage with a pluralistic approach to exploring fine art.  The diversity of content creates a distinctive group of students that engage with and question a divergent range of approaches to studio practice and externally engaged projects.

Students also have the opportunity to develop their practice within an international context through the international exchange program, national and international study trips and the acquisition of foreign language skills. There are opportunities to engage in the contemporary art world through study trips, exhibitions, student exchange programs, visiting artists' lectures, specialist masterclasses and gallery talks at The Whitworth.

Data can provide insights to shape decision-making, power scientific innovation, improve business operations or inform government policy. But it takes state-of-the-art statistical and computational methods to unlock that power. Our MSc Data Science course lets you master those methods.

On this data science masters, we’ll equip you with the knowledge and skills to acquire, curate, manage and analyse data for solving real-world problems. You will gain essential, transferable computational and statistical thinking skills to create and deploy data-driven products and knowledge. And you’ll look at ways to solve challenges in a range of potential, data-rich, application domains, such as health, climate, transportation and sales.

You will have the flexibility to set the direction for your postgraduate studies with a master's project of your own design. While you’ll have the one-to-one support of your supervisor, it’s a solo project – as much about developing computing skills as it is about building confidence and autonomy, vital skills for the workplace.

We’ll help you put the technical skills into a real-world, professional context – helping you communicate your findings in the workplace, and address any of the legal or ethical questions that come with data processing.

BA (Hons) Fashion Design and Technology has an excellent reputation for producing menswear, womenswear and sportswear graduates who combine design innovation with an in-depth knowledge of the technical aspects of fashion design and manufacturing.

The course reflects contemporary industry standards and encourages students to design and develop innovative fashion products and ranges using both manual and digital technologies. Students work on live projects with industry partners and also have opportunity to undertake a placement and/or overseas study combined with a year in industry.

Students have the option to graduate with a Menswear, Womenswear or Sportswear award, by selecting specialist units in year two and three, or they can work across multiple specialisms. However, all students are encouraged to direct their learning towards specialized target markets such as luxury, outerwear, denim, tailoring, performance or lifestyle sportswear. The practical aspects of the course are underpinned by the study of the business and cultural contexts of fashion and consideration of sustainable industry practices.

Students work towards an exit portfolio that showcases their creative and technical skills appropriate to their chosen careers. While many graduates enter design roles, the technical aspects of the program also prepare students for other careers such as pattern cutting, fashion innovation and product development.

Placement options

Employability is at the heart of our teaching. All of our undergraduate courses offer an optional sandwich year route that gives you the opportunity to apply for an industry placement between your second and final year. Or to combine study abroad with one of our partner institutions and a placement. If you choose this route, you will commit to working full-time in the fashion industry during your third year, before returning to complete your degree in your fourth year.

A placement year is an incredibly valuable element of your course as it allows you to apply your university-based knowledge, skills and understanding to your job role. During your placement, you will make your own industry contacts and enhance your CV by gaining real-world industry experience. Around 40-50% of our student cohort take part in a one-year full-time industry placement/study abroad with placement annually.

We have a dedicated placements team with over three decades of experience sourcing and securing outstanding placement opportunities. They will provide you with extensive support and advice prior to and during your industry placement.

Placement or Placement with Study Abroad combined opportunities are available both in the UK and internationally, with students previously studying/working in countries such as Austria, Germany, Norway, Hong Kong SAR, China, Sri Lanka, India, Australia and the USA.