Master of Fine Arts in Product Design

at Manchester Metropolitan University United Kingdom

Recognised and approved by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), this route prepares graduates of all disciplines for a career in the modern information society and its industries.

Your study will focus on the principles for the organisation, retrieval and accessibility of information and on the strategic management of information organisations, such as libraries, the information landscape, for example online and on the web, and on the development of library services of all kinds. Successful completion of a dissertation develops your knowledge of the field and skills as a researcher resulting in the award of MA.

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.

Our undergraduate BEng (Hons) Electrical and Electronic Engineering degree will provide you with the specialist knowledge and expertise required for a professional career in electrical and electronic engineering. With project-based learning in all years, including live industry-led projects, you’ll develop the transferable skills and the multi-disciplinary awareness so highly prized by industry.

Study electrical engineering at Manchester Met and you’ll start off by getting a solid introduction to key engineering principles, before specialising in subjects such as electrical energy systems, control and automation, and electronic systems design. You’ll also learn to use advanced engineering software as you develop your analytical skills and work on more cutting-edge topics.

You can choose to study our electrical and electronic engineering course over three years, or take an extra year for a placement in the industry. Whichever route you take, you’ll have all the skills and understanding you need to get started on your engineering career.

This 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.

Placement options
All of our degrees offer the chance to spend a year getting a taste of professional life. If you choose to go down this route, your degree will take one year longer, with the third year spent working in industry. These optional placements not only give 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. We offer a range of services to help you find the right placement, including employer presentations, advice and placement fairs.

This program provides an opportunity for you to develop specialist knowledge of fashion buying and merchandising from a managerial perspective and the skills required to thrive successfully within this fast-paced, competitive, global industry. To achieve this, the course takes a vocational approach with a strong academic underpinning, whilst encouraging creativity.

Industry-related briefs, supported by local and international fashion businesses, will expose students to live situations where they will make real-world decisions and learn to communicate effectively at all levels and across language barriers. Fundamental to the program is the development of professional, managerial and personal abilities, such as commercial awareness, financial analysis, negotiation and relationship management, all essential to success in international business.

The balance between academic underpinning and vocational partnerships facilitates the development of research and analytical skills, providing a deep understanding of technology, sustainability, ethics, finance, future markets, profit margins, pricing, sales strategies, and turnover. The MSc Fashion Buying and Merchandising Management will equip graduates with a range of key skills required to help evolve the fashion industry to become more ethically conscious, socially progressive and environmentally sustainable.

From ancient civilizations and great empires, to terrible battles and the roots of our modern society, history is a vast landscape to explore and understand.

The past is part of our everyday lives, shaping our world profoundly. Study history and you won’t just learn about what happened in the past. You’ll develop a better understanding of the how and why of the events that make us who we are. In every period we study, our courses seek to develop different approaches and methods to understanding the past, embracing political, social, and cultural history. We foster the practice of history as an inclusive discipline, and recognise that powerful ideologies of race, gender and social status have shaped our past and our present. In other words – you won’t just discover the story, you’ll investigate and interpret its sources, impacts and meanings.

This degree program offers a roadmap for exploring the social and political landscape of human history. You’ll look at a huge variety of times and places – immersing yourself in wars, famine and poverty, charting technological leaps and social progress, and unearthing conspiracies, catastrophes and revolutions. And that’s just in your first year. In years two and three through your option unit choices, you'll have the opportunity to specialise and develop your interests further, and graduate with a degree title that reflects this: Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern, or American.

Staff researchers are constantly searching for new discoveries, fresh perspectives and unknown aspects of our history, bringing the past alive in the classroom. With this degree we give you the skills to understand the world and how this affects societal developments.

You may also have the opportunity to study abroad, including in the US, or spend your third year on placement in Britain or abroad.

Placement options

You may have the chance to spend a year getting a taste of professional life. It is an opportunity to develop core skills and explore how this course can relate to the graduate world, and it shows employers that you’re ready to get to work.

You are free to choose Placement opportunities from a wide range of roles both in the UK and abroad, with the opportunity to take advantage of our connections with local heritage institutions, museums and archives. You will be supported by a dedicated placement team who provide links to employers through presentations, events, and fairs, and provide a specialist program of guidance on recruitment procedures including CV and interview preparation, as well as work readiness and working overseas.

Graphic Design is a hands-on, ideas-driven studio-based course where you will learn a variety of approaches to visual communication. Distinctive creative personalities are nurtured and the unconventional is actively encouraged.

After developing your creative visual language in Year 1, you will be able to apply your skills to a range of personal and industry-related projects in Year 2. Your final year will see you develop a professional portfolio that reflects your personal interests and individual career aspirations.

At all stages of the course we focus on contemporary and relevant design that embraces intellectual curiosity and design as an experience. You have the opportunity to connect with industry, either through visiting speakers, live briefs or work experience.

Product designers at Manchester Met explore why, examine how, and ask ‘what if?’ We are investigative and critically responsive to human and global needs, developing innovative design-led solutions that connect the consumer experience of products, systems and services. As a product design student, you will be creative with purpose, gaining critical understanding of the emergent issues affecting design across society and culture, learning how to be a designer of products that enhance functionality, interactions and relationships with people and the places we inhabit.

 You will develop essential skills in creative methods, research, design thinking, prototyping and design strategy, applying design intelligence to the creation of new product opportunities and solutions. You will discover how to design products that embrace both traditional and contemporary approaches to production and manufacturing, generating value through the application of materials, processes, and technologies. This course will enable you to produce innovative crafted design solutions and develop the creative and professional skills required to support a sustainable career in product design.

Product Design at Manchester Met builds on the success of our previous programme, BA Three Dimensional Design, which has produced influential and award-winning graduates including designer and architect Thomas Heatherwick, jeweller Ruth Tomlinson and ceramicist Joe Hartley.

Philosophy is about making sense of ourselves and the world around us. It’s about asking and trying to answer the most fundamental theoretical and practical questions - from trying to understand the nature of consciousness, to whether current political institutions enable political freedom.

On BA (Hons) Philosophy you’ll consider ground-breaking philosophical theories from figures like Socrates, Kant and Nietzsche, to more contemporary thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Hannah Arendt and Judith Butler. You’ll explore theories about the meaning of life, the nature of reality, who we are as individuals and society, and how these theories have shaped our ideas about humankind. And along the way, you’ll find your philosophical voice and develop a rich set of analytical and critical skills invaluable for your future – with the power to influence others and drive change.

As a philosophy student you will be joining a hub of research-active philosophers with local, national and international impact, with many of them being invited to present at major international conferences and workshops. Our staff work across key areas including History of Philosophy, critical social theories, Philosophy of Art, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Education, History and Philosophy of Science and much more – with this expertise behind us, we can give you a rounded, balanced understanding of the subject.

Placement options

You may have the chance to spend a year getting a taste of professional life. It is an opportunity to develop core skills and explore how this course can relate to the graduate world, and it shows employers that you’re ready to get to work.

You are free to choose placement opportunities from a wide range of roles both in the UK and abroad. Students choosing this option are supported by a dedicated placement team who provide links to employers through presentations, events, and fairs, and provide a specialist program of guidance on recruitment procedures including CV and interview preparation, as well as work readiness and working overseas.

BA (Hons) Interior Design is concerned with the occupation of space, how it is used and importantly, how it is experienced. We promote the understanding and subsequent remodelling of existing spaces, in order to create meaningful interventions.

This course views interior design as a distinct, rigorous practice. Through architectural and design interventions, we engage with collaborative and creative ventures to enhance human interaction with their environment. This can be applied at an architectural scale whilst appreciating the detail and fabrication of objects, surfaces and materials.

The core elements of the course are taught by practising designers and architects, touching on all aspects of interior design such as interior architecture, exhibition design, event /set design or object/element design.

The course advocates the synthesis of this ideology as a creative, rigorous and intellectual process. We value ideas, invention and practical resolution in the creation of new, and often unconventional interior identities. We can create experiential, experimental or functional spaces. We shape environments, generate identities, question programs, detail objects, design or specify materials and furniture.

Placement options

Professionalism is embedded in all aspects of the course through visits from respected professional critics from industry, Live projects and Unit X. Students are also supported and encouraged to seek self-directed work experience in vacation periods. Students have undertaken work experience in Manchester for companies such as Stephenson-Bell, Ian Simpson Architects, Start Judge Gill and Sheppard Robson, and in London for Imagination, Johnson-Naylor, Conran+Partners, Casson-Mann, Virgile+Stone to name a few. Many enterprising students use the vacation to seek work experience abroad and opportunities have arisen in Japan (Klein-Dytham) and Dubai (Paul Bishop Design), Australia and the US.

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.