Bachelor of Science in Sociology

at University of Bristol - Clifton Campus United Kingdom

This applied psychology degree uses psychological research methods to understand and interpret social and human behaviour in the context of education, wherever and whenever it happens throughout people’s lives.

As with our BSc Psychology in Education, education is conceptualised as lifelong and in many different contexts.

The British Psychological Society accreditation means that successful students are eligible to apply for professional training as a psychologist.

If you achieve the required grades at the end of the first year, you will spend your third year at a partner institution overseas. See Global Opportunities for more information.

The course currently includes an optional placement unit, Education in Practice, where you will have the opportunity to connect your academic learning with the practice of education on a placement within a school, community organisation, charity, museum or other relevant organisation.

Students acquire valuable skills spanning two, rapidly changing disciplines that inform each other. You will apply psychological theory and research to real-life educational settings involving children, adolescents and adults.

Lectures, workshops, seminars, discussions, guided independent study and tutorials offer an evidence-based and flexible basis for professional development. Seminars and workshop activities encourage you to collaborate with others, while individual and group presentations help you develop confidence in conveying your arguments and ideas.

You will explore all the major mammalian body systems from a molecular level up to whole body responses.

In the first year you will learn the physiology of how the body works, system by system, including in-depth exploration of the cardiovascular, respiratory and nervous systems.

This equips you to undertake an integrated approach to physiology in your second year, such as understanding the demands of exercise and how we form memories. Alongside physiology, you will have the opportunity to study complementary subjects, including pharmacology, anatomy and psychology, broadening your knowledge base of the biomedical sciences.

By the third year you will be getting to grips with the latest cutting-edge research, taught by staff who are internationally recognised in their research area on topics such as neurological and psychiatric disorders and the heart in health and disease. You will also have the opportunity to explore physiological topics of interest in greater depth by engaging in one of a wide variety of research projects.

Graduates in BSc Physiological Science have wide-ranging skills and go on to take up a variety of careers, including roles within biomedical and healthcare research, graduate medicine, teaching and management.

You will learn about the fundamental building blocks and forces of nature and how quantum physics and relativity help us understand the world around us, from the infinitesimal scale of particle and nuclear physics to the cosmic scale of galaxies and the Universe.

Year one gives you a comprehensive grounding in physics and mathematics. In year two you will develop a fundamental understanding of the principles of physics, including practical work in the laboratory and computational physics. Flexibility and choice are key features of a Bristol physics degree and you are usually able to transfer between courses in the first two years.

In your final year you will undertake a major project, working in a research group with a staff member. Our students' final-year projects address questions at the frontiers of our research fields and the most successful have been published in scientific journals.

You will join a friendly department with a very active, award-winning student society. We encourage you to develop a broad range of skills, including the experimental, theoretical and analytical skills needed for a career in research and industry. Our physics graduates have an excellent record of employment, a testament to the value that employers place on these skills.

Researchers, research managers, policy advisers and service planners are all faced with a growing need for research that is timely and relevant. This program builds on the links between research and policy in developing the particular skills and capacities needed by policy-oriented researchers, professionals and postgraduate students who are interested in carrying out public policy, social policy and social welfare research. We believe this is vital if researchers are to maximise the impact of their work in addressing issues of real concern to policymakers.

The program provides core research training in philosophy and research design in the social sciences, along with introductions to and further approaches in quantitative and qualitative methods in the social sciences. It also offers optional units in our particular areas of research expertise, such as child and family welfare, gender and violence, health and social care, poverty and social exclusion, and policy-oriented evaluation.

We recognise that students will be joining with relevant - albeit varied - experience. Therefore, there will be opportunities for you to draw on your own experiences as researchers, managers and policy advisers and share insights with other students working towards research degrees in disability studies, social work research and health and wellbeing.

Those who have recently embarked on a career in policy research, or who hope to do so, will find the program offers a combination of academic rigour, up-to-date policy content and relevant skills development.

Core units are taught in collaboration with other postgraduate programs, providing a co-learning environment and giving you the opportunity to interact and share insights with other students working towards research degrees in disability studies, policy research, social work research and health and wellbeing. 

Data science is an exciting emerging discipline having a profound impact on society. The world produces increasing volumes of data every day and making sense of this data has the capacity to be transformative. Data science combines mathematical, statistical and computational approaches to enable knowledge discovery from data. Career prospects in this field are very strong.

Bristol’s data science expertise means that you’ll be taught the sophisticated theory and methods needed to address modern data-analytic challenges by leading academics in this field. You will study units involving a blend of theoretical background and practical skills designed especially for this new course, including Mathematical Tools for Data Science, Advanced Linear Modelling and Classification, and Algorithms and Machine Learning. Our highly interdisciplinary program features links with the Bristol Institute for Scientific Computing (BriSC) as well as exposure to real-world problems from our industry partners.

With applications across a wide range of industries, studying data science will equip you with the knowledge and skills you need to fast-track your career. Pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, market research, social media, finance, sports, and disaster management are all fields with high demand for data scientists.

If you’re interested in pursuing further research, our Centre for Doctoral Training, COMPASS, offers the opportunity to study computational and statistical science through a four-year PhD program.

This MA builds on these outstanding research strengths. It is intended for graduates of philosophy, psychology or biology who wish to study philosophy of science with an emphasis on the biological and cognitive sciences. The programme focuses on philosophical issues arising from these scientific disciplines. The history of science is studied in terms of the philosophical debate about the nature of scientific method and knowledge.

This four-year course is ideal for those considering scientific careers that will make direct use of their subject-specific knowledge and skills.

Our degrees incorporate units in chemistry, physics and mathematics. The first year gives you a comprehensive grounding in these subjects, while later years focus on atomic and molecular science and its interdisciplinary applications.

You will focus on areas at the interface between chemistry and physics, with limited treatment of organic chemistry and more physical and non-synthetic inorganic chemistry. Similarly, there is very little nuclear and particle physics after your first year but an emphasis on materials science and nanoscience.

As well as lectures and practical classes, small-group tutorials and workshops help develop your understanding of challenging and exciting concepts. Practical labs in both chemistry and physics help develop experimental techniques, computational modelling and programming skills needed in the final year for conducting a research project with a research team.

This course combines politics and international relations with study of Spanish, the second most widely spoken European language in the world. This provides a valuable skill set tailored to the increasingly globalised workplace.

You will study the politics of individual countries and governments, and the relationships between countries, communities and individuals.

Politics is organised around three themes:

• Political theory
• Comparative and national politics
• International relations.

In Spanish you will study a combination of language and culture units. You will spend your third year abroad, enabling you to refine your language skills and cultural knowledge and gain valuable work experience. For details on year abroad opportunities please see Global Opportunities.

Both schools encourage synergy between research and teaching, resulting in a vibrant learning environment for students as staff respond in their teaching to new research. This course combination offers an enriching experience with exciting intellectual challenges.