Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Media and Creative Writing

at University of Hertfordshire - De Havilland Campus United Kingdom

Study with a top History department and be taught from the cutting edge of historical research. Learn to write for a broad audience and communicate your ideas effectively with our colleagues in Journalism.

Our BA History and Journalism gives you the opportunity to study two subjects that will help you to hone your investigative and analytical skills, while developing your writing style.

Through our diverse and inclusive History curriculum you will learn about an array of cultures and identities. What links our work is our focus on people’s history and everyday lives. This is represented strongly in our first year programme, which will give you an insight into the making of the modern world through exploration of faith, magic and medicine, campaigns for freedom and equality, Africa and the world, and America from Hamilton to Trump.

Throughout your degree, the common link between the two disciplines will be the development of research skills. As historians you will learn to analyse historical documents and debates among historians, while in Journalism you’ll explore print, digital, photographic and broadcast journalism.

This ability to work as an effective and confident researcher, honed over the course of your studies, will benefit you in the final year of History if you choose to write a dissertation. This extended piece of work will grow out of a topic that interests you. Previous students have been inspired by their year of study abroad, while others have worked on the history of jiu jitsu, women code breakers at Bletchley Park, the Notting Hill riots, and vice and sexuality in 17th-century London. One of our final year students won the British Commission for Maritime History Prize in 2016 for his dissertation on the East India Company.

We give you: 

• An exceptional History team, conducting world-leading research (REF 2014), and a team of industry-experienced journalists,
• Stimulating, innovative courses - our History students reported almost 94% overall satisfaction with their course (2018 National Student Survey)
• A flexible programme of study, allowing you to concentrate on areas you find especially interesting and the scope to write a History dissertation on a topic about which you are passionate
• intensive, engaging modules in Journalism designed to help make you a confident journalist, ready for the digital age
• CV-building potential and practical experience through work placements and extra-curricular activities

Modern media is becoming more and more influential in every aspect of our society, from politics and economics to the way we communicate with our closest friends. The way language is used varies for different media, but you can also look at how language reflects society, and how it changes over time.

Our BA English Language and Media degree introduces you to the scientific study of the English Language and allows you to examine human communication in different media contexts. You’ll explore the theory, historical contexts and modern practices that make up our global media landscape. You’ll examine the emergence of new media in an increasingly media-centric world, discovering the different ways the media communicates, how its industries are connected and how it influences us as individuals and societies.

In your first year you’ll be introduced to media communications in general as well as consider the relationship between media and society alongside core English Language modules. You’ll also explore the diversity of use of the English language including regional variants, pidgin and creole English, language and ethnicity, and slang and street English.

Core modules in your second year focus on English grammar and the sounds of English. You can explore theories of how and why language developed and study language-related real-life problems such as plagiarism and crime investigation in forensic linguistics. You’ll develop an in-depth knowledge of specialist areas such as public relations, advertising and digital media, as well as broader transferable skills like the ability to critically analyse media content.

In your final year you can follow modules in different topics, including child language and communication, clinical linguistics, gender and language, and formulaic language, informed by our academics’ own research specialisms. You’ll also have opportunities to work with fellow students to create media products, go on a work placement, hear from industry speakers and build a network of contacts.

This degree involves a practical workshop programme, establishing and refining your understanding of the tactile qualities and properties of materials and how they can be manipulated to express your ideas. In the First Year you’ll learn contemporary approaches to designing and making across a range of 2D and 3D media. Then, in the Second Year, you’ll focus your interests in order to reach the high level of refinement necessary for the professional marketplace.

The final year results in a production of richly diverse range of artifacts - such as experimental clothing and accessories, objects and surfaces for interiors, site-specific pieces and conceptual works for exhibition or commission. Our students produce a richly diverse range of artefacts, such as experimental clothing and accessories, objects and surfaces for interiors, site-specific pieces and conceptual works for exhibition or commission.

• The Contemporary Design Crafts Textiles degree encourages fresh ideas, inventive use of materials and techniques, and awareness of contemporary markets.
• You establish and refine your interests in the field of textiles to reach the high level of skills demanded by the professional marketplace.
• Placements develop a versatile understanding of the workplace, establishing our graduates as contemporaries in a competitive professional market.

This unique course gives you the flexibility to pursue an engineering career designing aircraft from a pilot’s perspective, or to take the first step to become a commercial pilot. The compulsory flying element is mainly in the Final Year and is provided by a nationally recognised flight centre either in the UK or the US. There are additional fees for this, but at an attractively discounted rate compared to other flight centres. There are also opportunities to fly in the First and Second Years as an extracurricular activity, including the chance to use various flight simulators. The MEng’s extra year will deepen your knowledge of aerospace systems and develop your business and management skills.

• This MEng degree course in Aerospace Engineering with Pilot Studies places particular emphasis on the flying qualities from a pilot's point of view;
• You will get the opportunity to gain a UK National Private Pilot's Licence whilst doing your degree;
• The flying is offered locally at an attractively discounted rate.
• Our MEng Aerospace Engineering with Pilot Studies students have previously completed work placement years at companies including: Goodrich Control Systems, Honeywell (UK) Ltd, and MBDA
• Recent Aerospace Engineering graduates have gone on to work at organisations including The Royal Air Force, Marshall Aerospace and Defence Group, and McLarens Aviation

Studying an MBA can transform the way you think and the way you work, change the way others see you and open up new leadership and management opportunities.

This full-time MBA enables you to develop the critical and reflective strategic leadership skills you need to succeed in an uncertain world, challenging your assumptions, cultivating flexible thinking, effective decision making and responsible management.

What will I study?

Our teaching and learning methods ensure you are able to actively engage with your own development. You’ll benefit from a blended learning approach which utilises web-based activities and reading, alongside simulations, reflective writing, discussions and live enterprise projects.

All of the teaching resources have been designed in a highly structured way and complementary way to take you progressively through business concepts and to give you confidence, enhance your skills and expertise when completing specific tasks.

A participative style is used throughout to enable you to learn from your fellow students, as well as from teaching staff. Experiential learning is central to our teaching philosophy.

There is a considerable emphasis on the utilisation of theory and knowledge to make sense of your own and fellow participants' experiences at work. Case study material is widely used alongside case histories developed by fellow participants.

The MBA at the University of Hertfordshire has multiple pathways for students:

• MBA
• MBA (Human Resource Management)
• MBA (Entrepreneurship)
• MBA (Digital Marketing)
• MBA (Finance)
• MBA (Healthcare)
• MBA (Public Services)
• MBA (Sustainable Industries)
• MBA (Data Analytics)
• MBA (Project Management)
• MBA (Management Consultancy)
• MBA (Information Systems)

Why do we carve pumpkins, blow out birthday candles or leave ‘love-locks’ on bridges? When and where did these customs start? From urban myths to local legends, the stories we tell and the traditions we follow are part of our folklore, the shared beliefs and oral traditions that are handed down through generations.

The University of Hertfordshire’s MA Folklore Studies explores legend, ritual, belief and tradition in British society, providing students with a thorough grounding in the history of the discipline of Folklore Studies and examining current work in the field.

Aimed at recent graduates in related subjects such as literature, history, archaeology, anthropology or religion, who have perhaps touched on folklore in their dissertations and want to develop this further, this MA also offers opportunities for mature students looking to turn their interest in local folklore into an academic qualification.

The MSc in Data Science and Analytics utilises our strong international reputation for research in these areas. The expertise of our staff influences this course which explores current research and practice in data science and analytics, extending your knowledge and understanding of the principles and practice of obtaining data from various sources, the essential methods for pre-processing and cleaning data, data analytics and modelling.

Why choose this course?

• You will gain industrial experience by applying the skills you have learned throughout your studies in a practical environment.
• One of a range of advanced courses within our postgraduate Master's programme in Computer Science, this particular course provides you with a specialism in Data Science  and Analytics
• Advanced topics studied include mathematics and programming of data science, data mining, machine learning and neural artificis, and data analytics applications.
• Taught by a highly-regarded and long-established computer science department.
• Computer Science saw 90% of its research ranked as world-leading (Research Excellence Framework, 2021).

Our sports coaching degree gives you the opportunity to explore coaching theory, research and practice. You’ll focus on contemporary areas of sports coaching study, including coach education, learning and practical skills. You’ll also develop your own specialised coaching knowledge, attributes and abilities through a whole range of theoretical and hands-on experiences. Throughout, we’ll encourage you to shape your own professional development journey and achieve the appropriate vocational coaching qualifications to take your career in the direction you want. We’ll also emphasise the importance of developing your academic and research strengths, improving your confidence, credibility and critical writing skills.

Data is the currency of all but the most theoretically-based scientific research, and it also underpins our modern world, from the flow of data across international banking networks and the spread of memes across social networks, to the complex models of weather forecasting. The constant generation of data from our digital society feeds into our everyday lives, affecting how we receive healthcare to influencing our shopping habits. In order to handle, make sense of, and exploit large volumes of available data requires highly skilled human insight, analysis and visualisation. The professionals working in this field are called ‘data scientists’, who blend advanced mathematical and statistical skills with programming, database design, machine learning, modelling, simulation and innovative data visualisation. These professionals are in high demand in both public and private sectors in the UK and worldwide. This programme aims and learning outcomes are built around two guiding principles:

• To provide comprehensive understanding of the fundamental mathematical and statistical concepts underlying data science, and how they are implemented in algorithms and machine learning techniques to solve a variety of data processing and analysis problems.
• To provide training in the practical skills relevant to data science, central of which is the ability to write clean and efficient code in industry-recognised languages (in particular, Python and R), but also includes data handling, manipulation, mining and visualisation techniques.

You’ll be introduced to Linguistics, the scientific study of everything to do with language, from its structure and how it develops in children, to the ways it reflects society, how it’s used, and how it changes over time. You’ll be taught by research-active academics working in cutting-edge areas such as language and gender, formulaic language, corpus studies, bilingualism, bilingual processing and codeswitching.

What links our work is our focus on the applied use of English language, from English Language teaching to the use of forensic linguistics in solving language-related real-life problems such as plagiarism and crime investigation, to speech and language therapy and the study of language disorders.

In your first year, alongside core linguistics modules, you’ll study language and mind, where you’ll analyse child speech transcripts and consider language acquisition. You’ll also explore the diversity of use of the English language including regional variants, pidgin and creole English, language and ethnicity, and slang and street English.

Core modules in your second year focus on English grammar and the sounds of English. You can explore theories of how and why language developed and take a language competencies module leading to a work placement.

In your final year you can develop your own interests in short projects, or follow modules in different topics, including child language and communication, clinical linguistics, gender and language, and formulaic language, informed by our academics’ own research specialisms.

One final year option is corpus studies in English language, which will develop your research skills through your use of Sketch Engine, a text analysis tool that allows you to search vast samples of language, or corpora. Want to know when the word ‘Brexit’ first appeared in print or when ‘backstop’ acquired a new meaning? Find out by delving into databases of billions of words, to pursue your own original research projects.