Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Human Geography with Placement Year

at Manchester Metropolitan University United Kingdom

The world of business can be exciting, challenging and unpredictable. Strong management skills are in high demand to help teams navigate difficult times and make the most of new opportunities.

Of course, you’ll need to learn the theory and context to build a career as a manager or consultant. But we believe it’s how you apply that knowledge that really matters. This course is all about practical solutions to real-world problems.

Optional internship year

If you choose to take the optional one-year internship, you’ll do so once you have successfully completed your taught units. The internship takes place over 36-48 weeks – you will be supported by our Placement Office, who have extensive contacts with the industry and over 25 years of experience of helping students to find placements.

The Placement Office advertise a variety of opportunities, support and advise on the application and recruitment process and continue to support you whilst you are away from the University.

English and journalism have long been a strong partnership. Today, with the multimedia element, our Joint Honours Degree puts a modern spin on this most enduring of relationships.

This exciting course offers the chance to bring the former together with an up-to-the-minute, multimedia version of the latter, reflecting the demands of the modern media environment.

Today’s journalists are expected to operate across broadcast, print and online networks. With a broad range of units, we’ll give you all the skills you need to compete in this fast-moving world. You’ll learn from accomplished reporters and editors, drawing on extensive newsroom experience to give you industry-relevant understanding and insights.

You’ll also build a set of complementary skills through our range of English units, including critical and cultural theories, and textual analysis. Then when you get to your final year, you’ll have the chance to put those skills into practice – by tackling a substantial piece of project work, whether a portfolio of journalism or an extended piece of critical writing.

Along the way, you may have opportunities to study abroad and, if you wish, to do your third year as a placement - in Britain or abroad. You will be based in a lively department that is staffed by internationally renowned writers and critics, and there's a strong research culture, creating a learning environment that is both supportive and intellectually challenging.

Manchester has one of the biggest digital and creative sectors in the UK. With MediaCityUK, home to the BBC and ITV, it’s an ideal place for an ambitious journalist to build a network, gain experience and boost your career prospects.

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

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

Film and media studies focuses on the in-depth exploration of both cinematic and media forms, from the established to the new and emergent, from TV to games.

Taught by a large team with a diverse range of interests, you’ll have access to cutting-edge research expertise and excellent resources in a department as dedicated to supporting students as it is to inspiring them.

Film units introduce you to the history of cinema and its many forms and genres. This course will broaden your horizons from Anglo-American film to world cinemas, and develop your skills as a critical interpreter of the cinematic text. Media units explore the development of media industries, forms and criticism, but focus particularly on current and emerging platforms and industries. In your final year you can explore your interests in depth by completing an independent project on a topic of your own choice, working with academics who are experts in their fields.

The creative industries sector in Manchester offers a broad range of opportunities in professions linked to film and media. The city is an excellent place to study this subject and to begin gaining experience and building your networks. We’ll help you to be ready for the world beyond university by giving you the opportunity to engage with external partners, and you may have the chance to study abroad as part of your course, or to spend a year on a placement in industry in Britain or abroad.

Whatever the purpose and whoever the user, web design marries the technical with the creative. The pioneers and leaders in this industry over the past 20 years have been both talented developers and left-field thinkers – a combination of creativity and code that has helped shape the modern digital experience.

As a Web & User Experience Design student, you will be part of a vibrant, multi-disciplinary creative community at our School of Digital Arts (SODA). With an innovative curriculum that ignores the narrow limits of any one discipline, you’ll have ample opportunity for collaborating with fellow SODA students – whether they’re studying games, photography, animation or sound design (to name a few). It’s an approach designed to mirror the real working practices within the creative industries, but it also lets you find the cross-over areas and creative directions that interest you most. And, just as you’ll learn industry practices, you’ll also use industry tools – developing your skills in an environment that has been designed, built and equipped with the latest technologies.

More than a purpose-built creative school, we also boast a globally renowned creative setting. Manchester is home to the second-largest media and creative sector in the UK, with a huge range of production companies, digital agencies and media businesses, from national broadcasters to innovative start-ups. As such, it’s not only an ideal city for your education in web and UX, but a perfect place to take your first steps as a professional. Here, you can learn from some of those at the forefront of the discipline, build your network and secure your career in the media, games or digital tech industries.

By bringing together our academic expertise with Manchester City F.C.’s City in the Community Foundation, this degree offers the very best of both worlds and an integrated path to rewarding career goals.

This course offers work-based learning in Premier League surroundings, equipping you with the skills, knowledge and experience you will need to find success as a coach or sports programme leader.

Academic experts deliver the programme, providing insight and support during your three years. In addition, you are continually mentored and supported by practitioners from City in the Community who provide perspectives from the real world of delivering community sport coaching and sport development initiatives.

You will learn how coaching sport improves aspects of mental and physical health. The programme will cover all angles of project development – from planning and delivering activity, through to measuring impact – to help understand the potential of sporting opportunities to make a positive difference in the community.  

Placement options

You can opt to spend your third year getting a taste of professional life in a sports or health organisation with the four-year placement route. The program is built around work-based learning and will include placements at each level working with City in the Community on a variety of their football schemes.

Work-based learning is built into the course and you will typically spend 12 hours per week completing the work-based modules. They will give you the opportunity to explore all project areas within City in the Community and gain valuable, hands-on experience with project planning and delivery, monitoring and evaluating processes and quality assurance.

Across all three years of the program, students will complete work-based learning across the core strands of Manchester City F.C.’s City in the Community Foundation.

Tourism and hospitality are exciting and dynamic areas of study and present a wide range of opportunities for careers all over the world.

Following the impact of COVID-19, employers are going to be looking for fresh and innovative minds to help rebuild these industries in a rapidly evolving environment, creating a platform for the next generation of tourism and hospitality professionals.

On this course, we will teach you the latest tourism and hospitality management theory and practice and how it applies to tourist operations, attractions, resorts and more.

By industry, for industry
We have created this course in partnership with airlines, attractions, hotels and other organisations, including the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA), The Fat Duck Group and Expedia. We work with even more organisations from the visitor economy in order to give you first-hand experience of the industry throughout your studies.

You will have the opportunity to work on live client briefs and regularly hear from experts within the industry who will share their knowledge and expertise with you. Engaging with industry professionals will help to give you an insight into how different organisations operate, and how they respond and adjust to the opportunities and challenges they face.

Experts in the field
Our tutors have experience working in various tourism and hospitality organisations around the world, including tour operators, airlines, event organisers, hotels and attractions. In addition to our expertise in tourism and hospitality, you will also be taught by experts in the specialist areas of digital strategy and entrepreneurship.

We are passionate about industry sustainability at Manchester Met and the long-term future of tourism and hospitality. Join us on this course to find out how you could play a part in helping to rebuild one of the most exciting industries in the world.

Optional internship year

If you choose to take the optional one year internship, you’ll do so once you have successfully completed your taught units. The internship takes place over 36-48 weeks – you will be supported by our Placement Office, who have extensive contacts within the tourism and hospitality industries and over 25 years' experience of helping students to find placements.

The Placement Office advertise a variety of opportunities, support and advise on the application and recruitment process and continue to support you whilst you are away from the University.

International marketing is vital for businesses to connect with their customers in an increasingly competitive, and rapidly evolving, marketplace. This course will give you the expertise necessary to thrive in this dynamic landscape.

You’ll gain the knowledge, technical and personal skills to operate across a range of dynamic and competitive international marketing environments.

We’ll provide you with knowledge from experts with extensive links to industry, people who understand what it takes to succeed in this field, plus leading researchers at the cutting edge of knowledge. Their expertise will help you develop an understanding of international marketing and how it’s applied in industry.

This course offers you the opportunity to choose your own route through the field of animation, studying either MA Animation or the bracketed specialism, Visual Effects.

Animation is a discipline that adapts, challenges and leads the moving image industry. It is in the DNA that we all share since it can be applied equally to live action, games, XR, live performance, online, and any number of time-based media as well as being an important form in itself.

Creating animation is a collaboration, and at the heart of this course we encourage students to develop a strong network within the School of Digital Arts and industry focussed links. Animation is not a mono-discipline but multi-faceted, and our bracketed animation specialism reflects the many ways that animation can be applied and examined. From science communication, to award winning short films, to mind-bending VFX, animation touches and transforms many areas.

You will drive your creative projects in your chosen practice with staff who will guide and challenge you. Our postgraduate community is led by a specialist team of academic staff and visiting speakers who are practising artists, animators and researchers. They bring their passion and knowledge of the varied industries that animation feeds and share advice and expertise about how students will join them.

The postgraduate student experience is designed to provide you with opportunities to hone your specialist technical skills, challenge your thinking, and make professional links with the global creative community and industry.

Whether you want to attract visitors to Blackpool or manage hotel staff in Barbados, tourism is full of exciting opportunities. And in the aftermath of the global pandemic, the sector is becoming more innovative than ever.

With input from leading organisations like ABTA, Qantas, Visit Manchester and TUI, we’ve developed a range of modules directly relevant to a career in the tourism industry. You’ll explore key questions like what makes an attractive destination? How can marketing be applied in different markets? Which management strategies get the best out of employees? And you’ll put your ideas into practice, working on real world briefs for real organisations.

Develop skills for life
Tourism is big business. To succeed in this competitive market, organisations need managers with strong business acumen and the creative flair to come up with innovative ideas. Here at Manchester Met, we’ll help you develop both.

You’ll build essential skills like analysing financial statements and planning budgets. You’ll study operational models, learn the theories behind human resource management, and can even add a new language to your repertoire. Then, to turn you from a competent manager to a brilliant one, we’ll help you think creatively, strategically and globally. You’ll discover how to apply your broad set of skills to any challenge your future business or employer might face.

Uncover inside knowledge
The course content covers a huge range of topics – but it’s the teaching team that will bring it to life. They’ll use their contacts, their latest research and their experiences working in the industry to inform their teaching. You’ll always be up to date with the latest insights, whether it’s new theories of tourist behaviours, or how businesses stayed agile throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

With our links to top employers and leading organisations, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to expand your network through work experience or special events like guest lectures. And with the option of studying abroad or spending a year on placement, you can expand your horizons even further.

Study Abroad

Instead of a placement, you’ll have the opportunity to spend up to a  year overseas, studying with one of our partner institutions across Europe, or beyond. Go abroad in the third year of your degree, and you’ll not only learn about other cultures, improve your language skills and discover more about yourself – you’ll also boost your career prospects.

Having first-hand knowledge of another country’s cultures and traditions can take you far in a range of careers. And, by going abroad you’ll also demonstrate the kind of independent spirit and adaptability that many employers want.

Physical geography offers the chance to understand, investigate and model the physical interactions and processes that influence our environment and landscape. Study physical geography at Manchester Met and you’ll examine modern environmental phenomena and the long-term evolution of the landscape. You’ll explore Earth’s dynamic nature – not just looking at how it changes, but also how much it has changed over time – and you’ll investigate human impacts upon it, particularly in terms of past and future climate change.

While you can learn a lot on campus, there’s no substitute for seeing the physical landscape for yourself. As part of our program, we regularly engage in fieldwork, from day-long trips to residential trips across the UK and overseas. Being in Manchester also means you’ll have plenty to explore on the doorstep, with four national parks within a couple of hours’ drive. You can even spend a year developing your professional skills working on a placement, or broadening your horizons by studying abroad with the four-year route.

Placement options

All of our geography degrees have been designed to be flexible. You can opt for the four-year placement degree route and spend Year 3 on a professional placement with a degree-related organisation.

Alternatively, if you opt for the four-year study overseas route, you will spend your third year in Europe, North America or Australia, subject to national and international travel restrictions.