Master of Arts in International Relations and Global Communications

at Manchester Metropolitan University United Kingdom

Whether your ambition is to help an athlete smash world records, or improve the quality of life for recovering patients, we can give you the tools to achieve it.

Our sport and exercise science degree covers a broad spectrum of themes across sport and health. You’ll build an understanding of the key disciplines of biomechanics, physiology and psychology, and then develop specialist skills and knowledge according to your strengths and interests. You'll also have the opportunity to spend an extra year expanding your horizons, working on a placement in industry.

Study sport and exercise science at Manchester Met and you’ll have the support of our team of accredited sport scientists and experts who work with business, the NHS, government and international athletes. With our network of local sports organisations and health providers, you’ll have plenty of great opportunities to apply your knowledge and secure work placements.

Sport is part of Manchester’s DNA. It’s a big feature of the city’s history, character and economy – it’s also a big part of Manchester Met.

As one of few management courses in the UK focusing solely on sports, we cover topics including sport policy, marketing and business analytics.

Unlike other courses in the country, you’ll also explore areas such as politics, finance and law to understand how they apply to the sports industry.

The world around us is changing – and our environmental science degree will help you understand how. You’ll learn the skills and knowledge to measure, model and assess environmental change and its impact. Developed with employers, including environmental agencies and private businesses, this is a program with real-world relevance, built around developing the techniques and expertise you’ll find in the workplace.

The course combines aspects of physical and life sciences, helping you build an understanding of environmental issues today. You’ll also gain a wide range of practical and analytical skills, working in the lab and the field. By the time you graduate, you’ll be able to collect, process and analyse data from a range of sources across different scientific disciplines – giving you the understanding to make informed recommendations in a professional context.

Placement options
All of our geography and environment 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.

If you are 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 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 and 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 skills in the job market and are transferable to various professions.

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.

The Combined Honours program offers you an opportunity to study two subjects at degree level.

English:
English explores the role of writing in defining and transforming human experience. Creative writing is a contemporary art practice which expresses that experience.

At the Manchester campus, the English department has access to a community of internationally renowned writers and critics through the Manchester Writing School, one of the most successful of its kind in the UK. It boasts over 95 published graduates and its Creative Director is Carol Ann Duffy DBE (Poet Laureate 2009-2019).

Against this backdrop you will examine major periods and forms of literature, learning to analyze literary and media texts by drawing on wider humanities disciplines. Creative writing students will develop the craft of writing, learning to read as a writer and collaborate with artists across the creative spectrum. Both approaches develop the necessary skills in critical thinking and communication that are of value to graduates entering a wide array of career paths or establishing practice.

French:
Proficiency in modern languages can give you the competitive edge in the global jobs market. In both the private and public sectors, there is demand for professionals with strong language skills who can work in culturally diverse environments. Studying French at Manchester Metropolitan University will give you the opportunity to learn from native speakers. Our languages department have created their own multicultural community, including British, exchange and international students, along with foreign language assistants, allowing you to be absorbed into the everyday use of your chosen language.

The University has been providing professional language courses for more than 30 years and our staff are nationally, and in many cases internationally, recognized experts in their field. Our strong local, national and global links will help to enhance your study and future employment opportunities.

Placement options
If you take French as a major or equal subject you will spend your third year in France and we will assist you in choosing from a wide choice of partner universities where you can study.

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.

With our human physiology degree, you’ll develop both a strong theoretical and a practical understanding of physiology, with a particular focus on physical activity and health. You’ll look in-depth at the human body – from the cellular level to the whole person – through specialisms like molecular biology, neuromuscular physiology, cardiovascular science and human movement science.

You’ll also get up to speed with the latest theories about how the body responds to movement, exercise and nutrition. In our high-tech laboratories, you’ll learn how to monitor and scientifically investigate the various physiological systems as bodies come under stress from illness or our environment.

The degree combines the department’s life and health sciences teaching strengths with our internationally regarded research expertise.

Placement options

The course offers real flexibility, as you will enrol on the three-year course and then decide if a placement is right for you once you have started your studies. If you opt to undertake a placement, your course will normally be four years full-time. Placements are not guaranteed or included as part of the course, as you would be required to source your own placement if you would like to undertake one.

This course is at the forefront of production design and manufacturing practices and brings together students from creative and technical backgrounds, to foster original approaches to product design for manufacture. It supports you to explore and develop personal design methodologies and philosophies, and locate these within a deep understanding of historical, contemporary and future design practices, and wider social and cultural contexts.

You will undertake core units, delivered by production design specialists, consisting of design theory and practice lectures, material and manufacturing workshops, group seminars, individual tutorials, live external projects, and research study trips. Practical design development is supported by extensive hand and machine workshops for wood, metal, ceramics, glass and plastics, and digital workshops for laser cutting and large scale CNC routing.

Optional units facilitate innovative cross-disciplinary opportunities, supporting the development of collaborative working with students from within the material making and manufacturing cluster of MA/MSc/MFA Craft and MA/MSc/MFA Textile, and across the wider postgraduate design community. There are cross-faculty options to study within the faculty of “Science and Engineering”, acquiring advanced 3D CAD skills for industrial production, and utilising the latest advanced 3D printing processes. The Manchester Metropolitan Business School option addresses commercial aspects of design, enabling students to locate their ambitions within a defined financial model.

You will able to explore and challenge all aspects of product design, embracing opportunities for innovation across markets and production levels, from one-off making and batch fabrication, to flexible digital manufacture and high volume industrial production.

Our BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering degree provides a strong theoretical and practical foundation for those looking to open the door to one of the many career opportunities available to mechanical engineers. With project-based learning throughout, you’ll develop the transferable skills and multidisciplinary awareness that are highly valued in industry.

In your first year, you’ll get a grounding in the fundamental principles of applied mathematics and engineering sciences. What’s more, you’ll also get straight into the practical side of things, with a design-and-build challenge.

You’ll develop scientific and analytical skills as you study specialisms like solid and fluid mechanics, dynamics, thermodynamics and engineering mathematics. And with project work that’s rooted in our research and shaped around industry, you’ll learn how to apply those skills to real-world engineering.

This mechanical engineering degree is accredited by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) on behalf of the Engineering Council for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for registration as an Incorporated Engineer and partly meeting the academic requirement for registration as a Chartered Engineer.