Master of Arts in Creative Writing

at Manchester Metropolitan University United Kingdom

Whatever the brand, whatever the market and whatever the media, successful advertising comes down to a combination of creative thinking, commercial awareness and strategic insight. The kind of people who excel in the industry don’t just offer exciting ideas, but also have an excellent eye for detail, a flair for communication and an instinctive understanding of their audience.

You'll learn about consumer behaviour, brand management and digital marketing communications – to name a few areas. You’ll get to grips with the media landscape, exploring integrated campaigns that balance traditional and digital channels. Put your creative abilities to the test, turning your own ideas into memorable advertising and learn how it all fits in to a greater marketing strategy designed to build brands.

On our BSc (Hons) Computer Science degree, you’ll get an in-depth understanding of both the theory and technical aspects of computing, with an emphasis on programming, algorithms, data structures, and computer architecture. We’ve designed the course content to meet the needs of the industry, so you can be confident the skills you’re learning are the skills that employers look for.

You’ll begin by studying programming, computing mathematics, web development, computer architectures and databases as you cover the fundamentals of computing, developing your team working and communication skills as you go. Then, as you progress, you’ll tackle more specialized areas, like algorithms, data structures, networks, operating systems and the processes used to develop software in industry.

By your final year you’ll be ready to take on advanced topics like artificial intelligence and the study of different programming language paradigms. Carrying out a large-scale project will give you the chance to hone the skills you’ve learned and put them into practice.

Placement options
The full-time four-year sandwich route provides the opportunity to go on a placement for at least 36 weeks, where you’ll get a taste of professional life. Completing a placement not only develops your core skills and experience, but also shows employers that you’re ready to get to work. Graduate employers report that students who have been on placements tend to be well organised and better able to apply their skills in a structured way. This may be subject to national lockdown restrictions.

Political and economic developments such as Brexit mean that international trade agreements, foreign direct investment and the attractiveness of where a company does business and accesses talent are more important than ever.

In the digital age, almost every business operates on the world stage and supplies to multiple countries. To help you compete in a hugely competitive global landscape, our International Business Management degree will give you a greater understanding of the nuances, challenges and opportunities of operating overseas.

Exploring enterprise, entrepreneurship and emerging markets

We’ll help you gain specialist knowledge in managing people of different cultures and backgrounds, and the political and governing structures of different markets that influence how businesses operate.

You’ll also develop the cross-cultural management skills you need to build international business relationships in often volatile political, cultural and economic environments.

Our International Business Management degree offers four-year routes where you can spend your third year on placement or study abroad at one of our overseas partner universities. Past students have worked for Johnson and Johnson in Tokyo, Hellman Worldwide Logistics in the USA and Warner Bros in London.

By the time you leave our business school, you’ll have the business knowledge and cross-cultural management skills to kick-start your career in the UK and abroad.

Placement options

Our BA (Hons) International Business Management degree offers the chance to spend a year getting a taste of professional life. It not only gives you the opportunity to develop your core skills and learn about how a business really operates in your industry, but also shows employers that you’re ready to get to work.

The Business School Placement Team is ready to help. They offer a wide range of services, including employer presentations, advice and placement fairs. But it’s also up to you – the more proactive you are about applying for placement opportunities, the better.

Manchester has been identified as one of the major games industry hubs outside of London* (*source: 'A Map of the UK', Nesta, 2020). As home to organisations such as Gameopolis, the city is a driving force for building and coordinating the future of the games industry.

With our MSc in Computer Games Development, you’ll gain the skills required for an exciting career within this growing industry, both here in Manchester and beyond. You’ll learn the core essentials of programming for games and you’ll conduct playtesting sessions and user research to ensure that your games are fun, impactful, and that they effectively reach their target audience.

You will also complete a masters 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.

By the time you complete your masters, you’ll not only have the technical knowledge, you’ll also have gained key employability skills such as team working, communication, project management and negotiation skills. With the mentorship of passionate games-focused staff at Manchester Met, you will be able to build a refined and diverse portfolio, to help you work towards securing a job in the games industry.

The Joint Honours BA (Hons) English and Philosophy course route is distinctive because of its richly interdisciplinary approach to key ethical and intellectual challenges. BA (Hons) English and Philosophy is a popular Joint Honours combination which brings together two subjects with highly complementary approaches and interests.

As well as offering a balance of core and optional units rooted in each of the two subjects, this course has been designed so that your growing knowledge and skills in each subject will help you develop a distinctive perspective and distinctive strengths in the other. You may have opportunities to study abroad and, if you wish, can take your third year as a placement – in Britain or abroad. In your final year, you will have a chance to explore your interests in depth with a substantial piece of project work that presents a thesis, building on the knowledge and skills you've been developing over previous years.

The English and philosophy subject groups are staffed by internationally renowned writers and academics, and there’s a strong research culture, creating a learning environment that is both supportive and intellectually challenging. We pride ourselves on our excellent teaching and highly positive student feedback. And with our extensive cultural links both in Manchester and further afield, you are in the right place to begin building a network for your future.

The philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan is a centre of internationally recognised research, covering the History of Philosophy, critical social theories, Philosophy of Art, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Education, History and Philosophy of Science, and much more. We pride ourselves on covering Anglo-American and Continental European philosophy, and many of our research-active staff are regularly invited to give keynote papers at international conferences and workshops. Our teaching is research-led, so you can be sure you’re learning from experts at the forefront of various philosophical disciplines.

A degree in AI and data science will equip you with the knowledge and skills to acquire, curate, manage, analyse, and make inferences from data for solving real-world problems.

In your first year, you will study core computing topics such as programming and databases, as well as specialist subjects such as mathematics, statistics, and the principles and practice of data science. As you move into your second year you’ll progress onto more advanced topics, such as applied predictive modelling, algorithms and data structures, machine learning (a key topic in artificial intelligence), and the theory and implementation of alternative database models. In your final year, you’ll be ready to meet complex subjects such as deep learning, high-performance computing and big data, and you’ll turn your hand to a large-scale technical project. Alongside these subjects, you will be developing your communication and team working skills.

Study artificial intelligence and data science with us and you’ll gain essential, transferable computational and statistical thinking skills to create and deploy data-driven products. We’ll equip you with the knowledge for solving challenges in a range of potential data-rich application domains, such as medicine, health, climate, transportation, marketing and sales.

Placement options
The four-year placement route provides the opportunity to go on a placement for at least 36 weeks, where you’ll get a taste of professional life. A placement not only gives you the opportunity to develop your core skills and experience but also shows employers that you’re ready to get to work. We offer a wide range of services to help you find the right placement, including employer presentations, advice and fairs. But it’s also up to you – the more proactive you are about applying for placements, the better. This is subject to national lockdown restrictions.

Exercise can be an incredibly powerful tool – whether to drive elite athletic performance or to fight obesity, cancer, depression and a range of other conditions. Our BSc (Hons) Health and Exercise Science program can help you master that tool, with a unique blend of human biology, physiology and psychology.

Studying a wide range of units, you’ll develop an in-depth understanding of the structure and function of the human body, exploring how it responds to various forms of exercise at different points across the lifecycle.

You’ll get a good grounding in the key scientific principles, before developing higher-level knowledge focused on responses to the physical, psychological and environmental stressors that affect sports, exercise and health. Then, in your final year, you’ll focus on the specialist area that interests you most with a major research project.

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.

Sport is part of Manchester’s DNA. It’s a big feature of the city’s history, character and economy. And it’s a big part of Manchester Met too. We created one of the first sports marketing degree in the country and we’ve worked with experts in the industry to make it as useful as possible for your career.

Throughout the course you’ll learn what makes sports marketing so special. You’ll develop key skills in areas like brand management, digital marketing and commercial sponsorship.

The course prepares you for real life in the industry. So, you’ll complete practical projects like developing a sponsorship proposal, creating a digital marketing campaign or putting together a business plan for a new sports enterprise. To add even more to your CV, you can spend a year on placement with an employer, or go abroad to study at one of our partner universities.

We provide plenty of opportunities for you to learn from experts in the industry. We organise guest lectures and help you volunteer at sports organisations and events. We have links with the likes of Manchester City Football Group, GB Taekwondo and British Cycling.

Placement options

We’ve developed a wide network of industry partners – from major clubs and governing bodies to multinational sports clothing brands – not just to help us shape our sports management and marketing degrees, but also to provide potential destinations for our industry placements. By spending your third year gaining skills and experience with an organisation like Puma, Nike or JD Sports, you’ll get a taste of the professional challenges ahead, while showing employers that you’re ready for work.

With our BSc (Hons) Applied Computing degree, you’ll gain an insight into IT and computing industry practices. Alongside developing your technical knowledge and skills, you will also gain an understanding of how these skills are applied in an organisational context by learning about systems analysis, project management, software development, the management of data and the administration of information systems.

You’ll start by studying the core technical subjects of programming, computing mathematics, web development, computer architectures and databases as you cover the fundamentals of computing, developing your team working and communication skills as you go. You’ll then begin to specialise, studying topics such as IT project management, systems analysis and design, the software development process, computer networks and the implementation of database models. As you progress into your final year, you’ll learn about IT systems operations and administration, data management, database architecture and performance and you’ll conduct a large-scale project.

In addition to the computing skills you will develop, you will also gain key employability skills such as team working, report writing, communication and negotiation skills. 

BSc Criminology and Sociology with Quantitative Methods offers exciting opportunities for you to combine the study of the cutting-edge disciplines of criminology and sociology in the vibrant city of Manchester, whilst gaining extensive quantitative skills. Joint Honours students are based in one department, the Department of Sociology, which teaches both specialisms.

The BSc Criminology and Sociology with Quantitative Methods course is aimed at students who are interested in both disciplines and want to study the causes, patterns, consequences and responses to crime by situating them in the wider context of society, as well as develop a specialism in quantitative research methods. The first year introduces you to the building blocks of criminology and sociology: key sociological and criminological theories, social divisions and problems, the criminal justice system, crime policy and practice, and key social transformations such as digital culture. You will receive training in a wide range of research methods, both qualitative and quantitative, during the first two years. In the final year, you will focus on quantitative methods for designing, implementing and analysing social and criminological research, and will complete an independent project.