Master of Arts in Graphic Design and Art Direction

at Manchester Metropolitan University United Kingdom

This course combines the study of art history, focusing on developments since the nineteenth century, with the essential practical skills and critical perspectives needed by the contemporary curator. And Manchester School of Art school provides a distinctive, vibrant environment in which to consider art’s historical development and its relationship to society.

The course shares much of its teaching with BA (Hons) Fine Art and Art History, and students from the two courses collaborate on projects and exhibition-making. It is taught by a multidisciplinary team of practicing artists, art historians, curators and theorists.

The University's exhibition spaces, cultural programs and collections are used in the course’s teaching, providing opportunities to acquire valuable, professionally relevant experience and skills. The course also enjoys links to the city and region's galleries and arts organizations.

This course is a flexible and challenging master's, offering a range of potential specialist routes, such as Medieval and Early Modern, War and Conflict, Race and Gender, Country House, or a general History route.

We offer a wide range of modules that draw on the strengths of our research-active staff and the course aims to provide students with the skills to progress to higher research programs.

You can choose to undertake a placement related to your research interests, organized in collaboration with staff members, and drawn from our extensive network of regional contacts. Previous placements have included National Trust properties, the People's History Museum, and the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre (Huddersfield).

Traditional health and social care roles are changing. There’s a shift towards partnership working across the health and social care sector including within social services, charities, the NHS and social enterprises. We’ve designed this course to help you work across these settings so you can have a positive impact on people’s lives.

You won’t simply learn the theory behind integrating health and social care, you’ll explore how it works in practice from working with service users to designing service provision. Topics might include how unevenly distributed resources across society affect a person’s life, how the support and care a person needs changes as they age or how to recognise a person’s strengths to make a difference to their life.

You’ll also explore global representations and perspectives of health and social care. Alongside lectures and seminars, you’ll work in small groups to solve problems set by employers such as developing ideas for community projects around homelessness, poverty and isolation.

If you're interested in the way in which we communicate and how it can influence people, studying linguistics will help you unravel how language is inextricably linked to who we are. Linguistics is a popular course taken on its own or in combination with English or a modern language. It is devoted to the scientific study of natural language and concerned with how languages evolve, are structured and what they have in common. It also studies how languages are acquired and used.

Our program enables you to develop a sound knowledge of both theoretical and applied perspectives. It places emphasis on English, with examples from other languages where appropriate. The core elements of the course teach you about sentence structure (syntax), meaning (semantics and pragmatics), forensic linguistics, and phonetics and phonology. You will also learn about language use and variation in different social contexts, the media, and intercultural settings. Communicating effectively, critical thinking and developing rigorous analytical skills are valuable assets in the job market and are transferable to various professions.

In French, emphasis is placed on communicating effectively and developing transferable skills such as translating, interpreting, and interview techniques and the practical language classes embrace speaking, listening, reading and writing.

If you take French as a major or equal subject you will have the opportunity to spend your third year abroad in France. If French is your minor subject, the course will be three years with no study abroad.

Placement options

• If French is your major or equal subject, you will have the opportunity to spend year 3 studying in France and we will assist you in choosing from a wide choice of partner universities where you can study.

In both the private and public sectors, there is demand for professionals with strong language skills who can work in culturally diverse environments. We have created our own multicultural community, including British, exchange and international students, along with foreign language assistants, allowing you to be absorbed into the everyday use of foreign languages.

We have been providing professional language courses for more than 30 years. Our strong local, national and global links will help to enhance your study and future employment opportunities. If you study Spanish as a major or equal subject, you will be required to spend a year abroad. The experience of being immersed in another culture for several months is one our students find both beneficial and rewarding. They return having made new friends, experienced new places and having grown in confidence.

This course places language learning within the wider context of Spanish studies including culture, society, literature, film and history. The language units emphasise communicating effectively and developing transferable skills such as translating, interpreting and interview techniques, with practical language classes embracing speaking, listening, reading and writing. You will also have the option to study Spanish from beginners level.

TESOL is a practical branch of applied linguistics and it will help you understand language learning and teaching approaches, as well as the English language itself. You will develop a new understanding of different types of communication and other cultures.

This course will help you improve your own fluency and accuracy in other languages. You will gain experience of how to help learners of all abilities to become fluent English speakers and you will be taught by highly qualified and experienced practitioners who have taught across the world. All of these skills will give you a head start if you decide to take a further qualification such as CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) or Trinity Certificate TESOL.

Placement options

• You will have the opportunity to spend your third year in Spain or Latin America and we will assist you in choosing from a choice of partner universities where you can study.

The global trend in the manipulation of nutrient intake to enhance performance and the health of exercising individuals has grown exponentially. Matching the physiological demands with relevant dietary needs is a fast-growing area of sport nutrition. All of these factors are creating a demand for dynamic, innovative nutrition graduates.

We’ve designed our sport and exercise nutrition course to address the increasing awareness of the impact of nutrition on sport and exercise performance and the growing need for employment in the area.

You’ll examine the complex relationships between diet, health, physical wellbeing and performance whilst also gaining experience in the skills required to work in the field of sport and exercise, such as providing specialist advice on healthy eating, conducting dietary surveys and being an advocate of change.

Our sport and exercise nutrition degree also provides the option of spending an extra year working in a partner organisation on placement.

Placement options

If you choose the sandwich year degree route, you will spend year 3 of your studies on a placement in industry.  Placement learning is a key element of the course as it allows you to apply university-based knowledge, skills and understanding to the real world of work.

The MChem (Hons) Chemistry is an integrated four-year undergraduate masters degree that covers study areas like reactions and mechanisms, materials chemistry, drug discovery, computational chemistry and spectroscopy, chemical synthesis and physiochemical processes.

The program is a high-standard platform for a range of careers. It includes a research project unit, where you spend a year focusing on a major independent project that you design, carry out and present, alongside your other areas of study.

Throughout our chemistry degree, you’ll develop the kind of practical skills vital for lab work, along with a balanced understanding of inorganic, organic, physical and analytical chemistry.  You’ll also have the flexibility to pursue the specialisms you’re most passionate about – through your final project, but also within the units you study, helping you shape the knowledge, experience and skills required for the career you aspire to.

This course is at the forefront of craft-making practices and is for materially engaged makers who are looking to explore craft practices across a range of materials and object types. It encourages the development of craft across specialist and multi-material making, investigating and exploring definitions of contemporary craft practice.

The program is an opportunity to pursue a making practice that might already be located within a specific material area or object definition such as glass, ceramics, textiles or jewellery, or to develop and expand the definitions and materials of craft practice. The program supports the exploration of genre-breaking approaches to making, to develop individual and personal methodologies and philosophies, and locate these within a deep understanding of historical, contemporary and future craft-making practices, and wider social and cultural contexts.

With access to the wide range of hand, machine and digital technologies at Manchester School of Art, you will work within, across and between definitions of craft, to evolve and progress a unique and personal making practice. In addition to traditional material workshops across ceramics, hot and cold glass, metal, wood, textile print, weave and embroidery, there are digital making facilities for laser cutting, 3D printing, CNC routing, and digital print for textiles and ceramics, with access to specialist academic and technical expertise from across the School of Art, to support the development of a wide range of craft making practices.

Businesses and governments rely on economists to help them examine issues, identify trends and deal with financial uncertainty. By studying our BA/BSc (Hons) Economics degree, you’ll explore how organizations and individuals invest and allocate their resources.

Throughout the course, we’ll challenge you to think about choices people make and how those decisions affect every aspect of our lives. You’ll explore everything from employment to distribution of wealth, government spending to international trade.

Please note that all students will apply directly to the BA (Hons) Economics. After studying BA (Hons) Economics in the first year, you can choose to continue on the BA (Hons) Economics, or transfer to BSc (Hons) Economics through the second and third year of study.

MA Architecture and Adaptive Reuse is a programme about existing buildings, situations and places, and how over time these structures and locations can be encouraged to evolve, sustain new uses, and accommodate new users. Students on the course will investigate strategies for adaptive reuse - strategies that are not applied as a reaction to current conditions, but in anticipation of future changes.

Adaptation is now at the forefront of architectural practice; two of the most pressing challenges in the 21st century are climate change and urbanisation. Given that already more than half of the global population live in urban environments, and by 2050, it is projected that over 70% of the world population will live in cities, all societies need to be able to accommodate growth while at the same time, reducing consumption. The existing building stock needs to become both more efficient and more resilient.

Students will investigate the four main aspects of sustainable reuse - environmental, societal, inhabitation and economic – while also exploring heritage, history, memory, community, and the influence these factors have on remodelling activities. They will look at the impact that context and the environment have upon projects, while developing an understanding of some of the technical issues including construction, environmental control, and materials in order to make creative and appropriate proposals for new users of buildings. Students will also examine specific examples of adaptive reuse, theories of reuse and explore strategies for the conservation and adaptation of the existing environment.­­

The specialist workshops within Manchester School of Art and the University of Manchester will provide students with opportunities to explore materiality, fabrication, and the realisation of ideas. Studio teaching is research-informed and underpinned by design research methodologies and engagement with industry.