Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Animal Behaviour and Conservation with Placement Year

at Manchester Metropolitan University United Kingdom

Our BSc (Hons) Biology degree offers the chance to gain a solid grounding in the biological sciences – with the flexibility to develop your own interests and learn about the areas and aspects of biological sciences that match your career ambitions.

Study biology at Manchester Met and you’ll begin by learning the fundamentals of the subject, before exploring the areas that interest you most through a variety of option units. Along the way, you’ll explore the issues that shape our world and touch our lives – from molecular biology, microbiology and genetics, to ecology, animal behaviour, biodiversity and conservation.

The program also allows you to develop your own interests in areas such as comparative anatomy and physiology, plant science, brain and behaviour, population biology, biotechnology, biochemistry and the conservation of biodiversity, to tailor your learning to your career aspirations.

In our laboratories, you’ll get to grips with the latest equipment, as we help you develop a range of practical skills that you can take into your career. And, by getting out in the field, you can learn about biology out in the real world – whether in the UK or overseas.

Our biology degree also provides the option of spending an extra year expanding your horizons, either studying with one of our partner universities overseas, or working on a placement with a business or non-governmental organisation.

Placement options
The four-year placement route gives you the opportunity to spend your third year on a placement with a relevant employer, such as a conservation or environmental body, zoo or animal welfare organization, or with local government or a molecular diagnostics company. It’s a great chance to gain experience, build your network and develop transferable skills – all of which can boost your career prospects.

Our MA Inclusive Education master's is a flexible course for anyone interested in critically exploring inclusive education. We offer a full-time route and a part-time route so you can study at a pace that suits you.

From early years practitioners, teachers and leaders in education, to local authority, health services and aspiring researchers, our course appeals to a variety of backgrounds and professions. You’ll be joining a diverse and thriving community of postgraduate students from the UK and across the world.

You’ll analyse key issues, significant debates and global concepts in the field of inclusive education. Reflect on your personal understandings of special educational needs and consider the relationship between educational values and the development of inclusive practice.

You’ll learn the theoretical knowledge from expert educational researchers to make an impact in your current professional setting or future career and become a leader in education. You will evaluate and learn to think with a range of theoretical frameworks to deepen your critical analysis. And you’ll explore how theory informs how we interpret and analyse key issues in education.

We aim to empower you to approach your own research with confidence. You’ll extend your understanding of research techniques to prepare you for completing your own dissertation. Throughout the project, you will have access to support from active researchers in our internationally renowned Educational and Social Research Institute (ESRI).

You’ll learn from experts in education to become a leader in the areas of education that interest you. You’ll be able to specialise your studies around the educational topics you’re passionate about by choosing an option unit based on work by world-class researchers in the Faculty of Health and Education. Specialist option units may include topics such as literacy and language, educational philosophy, learning in informal settings, or international perspectives in education.

When you graduate, you’ll achieve a masters degree that highlights areas of your personal and professional interest.

Our creative writing courses are taught by internationally-renowned writers from The Manchester Writing School; one of the most successful of its kind in the UK, with more than 95 graduates and MA students who’ve gone on to become published writers. But skilled writers must also be well-developed readers and this course offers the best of both worlds, allowing you to combine Creative Writing and English as part of a joint degree.

While studying and practising creative writing, you’ll take a range of options from the English degree, including American literature, film, television and cultural studies. As you progress, you’ll have the chance to take part in creative writing workshops, focussing on two options from the selection of: prose, poetry and script. Our placement route offers you the opportunity to spend your third year on an industry placement, allowing you to apply university-based knowledge, skills and understanding to the world of work, and giving you an advantage when you begin looking for your first job after graduation. Or you may have the chance to spend a year expanding your horizons, studying with one of our partner universities overseas. In your final year, you’ll be ready to undertake an all-important independent creative project.

By the time you leave us, you’ll have an excellent understanding of the critical and cultural contexts in which you’re writing, together with the skills and experience to excel in the creative journey from original idea to finished work.

Placement options
Placement opportunities may be available both in the UK and abroad, in a variety of roles and sectors.

Our dedicated placement team have developed excellent links with various industries. You will be offered support through a preparation program of activities that includes guidance on selection procedures, working overseas, CV preparation, interview and selection techniques.

Your introduction to degree-level mathematics will leave no stone unturned, with a broad range of topics including discrete mathematics, linear algebra, calculus, statistics and decision mathematics. And in our high-tech teaching laboratories you’ll learn to program in a mathematical language, using software packages that are commonly used for both commercial and research purposes.

As you progress, you’ll be able to choose from a range of subjects that reflect your interests and career aspirations, culminating in a chance to apply your learning in project work. Typical areas of study include further calculus and linear algebra, numerical methods and modelling, mathematics of computer graphics, number theory, cryptography, operational research, financial mathematics, statistics, machine learning, dynamical systems and group theory.

With a toolkit that mixes the creative and the technical, an animator does all this and more. Whether working in the artistic or commercial worlds, animators produce the moving images for anything from film and broadcast media to digital platforms and video games. Our BA (Hons) Animation course brings together key aspects of contemporary professional animation practice to help you prepare for an exciting range of careers, from animation to concept art to games development.

As an animation student you will be part the School of Digital Arts, a vibrant community that offers the chance to explore every aspect of what it means to work in the digital arts. You will work across a range of creative practices – just as the professionals do – to collaborate on cross-disciplinary group projects, alongside photographers, sound engineers, filmmakers, games and media professionals. And, just as we mirror industry practices, we also work with industry-standard tools – learning within a brand new, purpose-built building that comes equipped with the latest emerging technologies for animation, filmmaking and more.

Manchester offers an ideal setting as an animation student. A global, creative city, it has a long-established history of animation and is home to Cosgrove Hall Films – creators of numerous children’s animations and whose company founders were both students of Manchester Metropolitan University. Today the city has a thriving industry, with a significant TV, film and digital production presence at MediaCityUK, which is home to the BBC, ITV and a host of independent media companies, all of which offer you some inspiring opportunities.

With a course that’s built on our local heritage and that makes the most of our industry links, you’ll have the chance to develop the skills, build the network and gain the experience that rewarding careers are made from.

Placement options

SODA Placement Year
As part of your studies with SODA, you may have the chance to take a year working on placement within the industry. During your year, you will spend at least 36 weeks working within an organisation in the industry, developing workplace skills, practical understanding and genuine industry experience.

SODA Study Year Abroad
You can choose to spend an academic year studying with an approved partner university overseas, developing your core skills while demonstrating your initiative by engaging with a challenging curriculum at a foreign institution. This offers practice credits from the host university, after you’ve completed Level 5 of your SODA program.

If you take the four-year placement route, Year 3 will be spent on placement.

On our MSc Artificial Intelligence course, you’ll be taught by academics who are experts in the area, many of whom are currently conducting research into the subject as part of our Centre for Advanced Computational Science research group. This ensures that our curriculum is based on research-informed content at the leading edge of this fast-paced field.

This course will build on your existing computing knowledge. We aim to equip you with the fundamental principles of AI to be able to critically evaluate the theories, techniques, tools and systems used in the field. And the interdisciplinary applications, allowing you to specialize in this exciting, developing area.

You’ll also complete an in-depth master's project with the support of our academic and technical team. By the time you complete our postgraduate degree in AI, you’ll be well placed to succeed in this high-growth industry and ready to tackle the challenges facing businesses.

A taught postgraduate course that conducts research into how global cultural and economic forces influence contemporary cities. The design, functioning and future of urban situations is explored in written, drawn and modelled work that builds on the legacy of twentieth-century urban theory and is directed towards the development of sustainable cities.

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.

On the School of Digital Art's (SODA) MA Sound Design course, you will create sound for environments and contexts that are immersive, interactive and responsive.  

Taught by a team of specialist researcher-practitioners, you will explore themes that will include sound for linear and non-linear narrative, interactive media and virtual realities.

You will be based in a school that is purpose-built for today’s fast-moving creative and digital sectors - equipped with the latest cutting edge technologies to enable you to develop industry-standard skills for creating and researching sound content across a wide range of digital platforms. SODA also offers opportunities for cross-disciplinary learning and to to collaborate within our dynamic creative community of photographers, filmmakers, games developers and more.

During the course you will develop professional links with the creative community and industries both locally, nationally and internationally. Guest lectures and masterclasses by international industry practitioners and researchers will help you to place your work within a context of innovative global sound practice.

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

Our BA (Hons) Product Design and Craft course has a material-led, experimental philosophy that pursues a thinking through making approach to design, supporting the development of personal creative agendas. Through a program of study that explores our understanding of the material world, you will learn how to be a designer and maker of objects that enhance our daily interactions. You will develop essential skills in creative thinking and design strategy, and then apply these to challenge how you design for product and for craft.

You will discover how to design and produce objects that embrace both traditional handmade approaches and contemporary machine and digital manufacturing. Through creative experimentation, we strive to give ideas a material voice, as the thinking behind an object and its material execution are of equal importance. Your design work will also look to address a diverse range of areas including social issues, global awareness and local demand by considering the objects you design and the materials and processes you use. This course will enable you to explore strategies, materials and processes so you can develop creative and professional skills to support a sustainable career in design and craft making.

BA Architecture is an innovative collaboration between Manchester Metropolitan University and The University of Manchester.

The course, which is appraised by the Architects Registration Board (ARB) and the Royal Institute for British Architects (RIBA), allows you to take the first step to becoming an architect.

You will benefit from the expertise of specialist practice and research-active lecturers, who provide a rich and stimulating environment in which to study architecture.

What's more, you'll be inspired by the world-famous city of Manchester - the industrial revolution birthplace turned 21st-century metropolis - and its vibrant, contemporary and innovative architecture scene.

Manchester is a showcase for recent regeneration and historic context, much of which has been designed with the involvement of our current students and graduates.

The city recognises the value of high-quality design, together with innovative and pragmatic approaches to resolving practical issues.

Delivered in collaboration with leading industry professionals, including our partners for this MA, Comma Press, this course will equip you with the knowledge and skills for a variety of careers in publishing.

You will explore the complex anatomies and eco-systems of the publishing industry and its markets in the UK and internationally, as well as the trends, innovations, opportunities and challenges facing this rapidly changing profession.

Through the duration of the course, you will gain a working knowledge of the business of publishing, examining the structures of a range of organisational models, from major corporate brands to small independent outfits; and you will develop an understanding of the different stages, roles and skills involved in the publishing process, and the different publishing formats and platforms available.