Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Politics, International Relations and Philosophy

at University of Hertfordshire - De Havilland Campus United Kingdom

Do you have a story to tell, or have you always wanted to be a writer? Perhaps you want to learn how to be a critical reader or gain a greater understanding of the craft of writing.
Studying English Literature and Creative Writing with us will help you find your voice, whether as a poet, playwright, novelist or scholar of literature.
This joint course combines the study of literature with the practice of creative writing. Studying literature will give you a greater understanding of how literary texts work, while this improved critical insight will help you put principles into practice in your own creative writing.

We offer a stimulating and supportive place in which to explore your ideas, hone your craft and understand literary texts. Our creative writing modules are taught by lecturers who are themselves award-winning practitioners and who bridge the gap between creative and academic approaches to literature. They include our poetry lecturer Wayne Holloway-Smith, winner of the Poetry Society’s Geoffrey Dearmer Prize and Seamus Heaney Prize nominee.

Over the three years you can choose specialist creative writing modules in poetry, creative non-fiction, drama, short story writing and prose fiction. Those specialisms are reflected in our English Literature modules, which range from children’s and young adult literature to film adaptations and work written in English from all over the world.

By the time you graduate, you will have a polished piece of work which has the potential for publication. Recent successes for our students include short stories published in Bandit and AnotherLenz magazines and poetry published in Rising and international magazine Poetry London.
In your first year, an underpinning core module, Becoming a Writer, will introduce you to genres and forms and examine the universalities of dialogue, plot and language. A second core module, Identity and Contemporary Writing, introduces you to some of the most exciting new writing as a model for your own work, while an optional module enables you to specialise in writing for the screen.
The practicalities of getting published or working in literary publishing are explored in a creative writing module in your second year taught by a former editor of Granta, the renowned magazine of new writing. For your final year your particular creative interest can be channelled into a long piece of writing, which can be poetry, prose or drama.

With an increased scrutiny on eating and obesity, along with demand from both government and the public for nutritional and dietetic education, the role of dietitians has never been more important. Dietetics is the interpretation and communication of the science of nutrition, which enables people to make informed choices about food and lifestyle. Dietitians work with individuals with special dietary needs, inform the general public about nutrition, evaluate and improve treatments, and educate patients, doctors, nurses and other health professionals. This course covers the broad range of sciences that informs dietetics and is the first of its kind in the UK to award academic credit for practice placements.

• The first UK university to award academic credit for dietetic practice placements.
• Opportunities for practice placements in the NHS (acute and community) and, from 2019, in non-NHS settings.
• Offers undergraduate route to qualify as a dietitian in 3 years rather than 4 years.
• We welcome graduates who are changing direction and want to qualify as a dietitian.
• New science labs and dedicated diet laboratory
• Active student-led Nutrition and Dietetics Society (NADS).
• Encouragement to participate in extracurricular volunteering.
• Excellent record of graduates presenting at British Dietetic Association Research Symposia.
• Active research community

The School has a strong international reputation for research in this area and this expertise 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. This MSc can lead to a career such as a data scientist.

Graduates obtaining this award will be equipped to pursue research to PhD level, or to enter specialist employment in technically advanced and unpredictable working environments requiring sound judgment and the exercise of personal responsibility and initiative.

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)

As a learning disabilities nurse, you’ll have the challenging yet rewarding job of caring for people with a range of special needs. This pre-registration course gives you the knowledge, skills and attitudes to enhance a person’s health and wellbeing, and improve or maintain a range of complex developmental, physical, psychological and mental health needs. You’ll work in partnership with people with learning disabilities, their families, carers and other health and social care professionals. Ultimately, you’ll help people with learning disabilities to live a life that’s as fulfilling as possible. As with our other nursing courses, you’ll take a variety of clinical work placements.

The Learning Disability Nursing degree pathway offers students the opportunity to take up the challenge of ensuring that the health care needs of people with learning disabilities are addressed using using a holistic approach, both within mainstream and specialist services.

• Enhance the person's health and well-being.
• Improve or maintain a range of complex developmental, physical, psychological and mental health needs.
• Work in partnership with people with a learning disability, their families / carers and other health and social care professionals.
• Reduce barriers to disability and promote social inclusion.
• Support people with a learning disability to achieve a life which is as fulfilling as possible by maintaining their rights, choice and independence.

Diverse, dynamic and full of fresh challenges, event management can take you all over the world, working on concerts, corporate events, sports fixtures and festivals. Marketing is an essential part of it, raising events’ profiles and selling those all-important tickets. We’ve created a powerful, practical degree which brings these subjects together to help you launch a successful career, and this course gives you an in-depth understanding of event management, hospitality, marketing, advertising, sales, communications and public relations. Working with industry leaders and professional bodies, we’ve combined rigorous academic theory with real-world scenarios to help you explore why some events succeed and others fail.

Partnerships and Opportunities
As part of our enterprise and employability focus, we give you many options to gain work experience.  You can undertake internships during the summer, engage in multiple work shadowing opportunities, and take on a year long placement between your second and third year. Our students have completed placements with a wide variety of businesses, such as Walt Disney, Bluehat Group, British Fashion Council, Givergy Events and charity organisations including Hope for Children.

Many students also choose to broaden their horizons through our study abroad programme in second year with one of our partner universities in Europe, North America or Australia. Some combine their language study options with a half-year of study in the language home country and then a further half-year work placement in the same country. Without a doubt, they come back with excellent skills in a second language in addition to fantastic memories, experiences and career skills.

Our partnership with Walt Disney World Resorts and the University of California Riverside gives our students the chance to study and work in the United States of America on this fantastic internationally renowned programme.

You may also be interested in the following courses:

• Tourism Management
• International Tourism Management
• Event Management
• Event Management and Tourism

• Each student on the programme has their own studio space within the shared PG Art studio area. You will be able to work alongside fellow students in Photography, Fine Art, Contemporary Textiles and Contemporary Crafts, as well as students across the School.
• The School has excellent facilities accessible to all students – darkrooms, print and textiles studio, 3d workshops (including glass, ceramics, jewellery, 3d printing), equipment loan store, and computer suites.
• All the teaching staff are creative practitioners/artists who have national or international standing and expertise. Invited speakers, artists/creatives, curators and theorists, also add to the creative mix. The teaching staff are passionate about the work we make and the work you make!
• The course is suitable for those interested in commercial and/or fine-art approaches to photographic practice.
• See our UH Photography Flickr page for portfolios and news of course and alumni activity.

Why choose this course?

This MA Photography award deals with the unique blends of fact, fiction, distinctive style and technical practices that characterize the many forms of contemporary photography, whether that is form a commercial or fine-art approach. It is about the ways in which traditional practices and digital technologies are coming together, developing new forms of photographic practices and bringing new possibilities for the creation, publication and exhibition of photographic imagery.

This postgraduate degree is concerned with communicating truths, stories, facts and emotions, it deals with persuasion and comment and the aesthetics of the image in ways which are visually rich and diverse. The widespread adoption of digital technologies to capture, edit, display and distribute photographic images has brought many new possibilities for the creation, publication and exhibition of work to a wide range of audiences and for a wide range of purposes.

The same technologies bring questions about precision and accuracy, the role of invention and imagination, and the way that the photographic image is received, understood and consumed in today's culture. You will work with traditional wet, analogue photographic resources, digital workflow facilities, or a mix of the two which is most appropriate to your personal practice.

The School has a strong international reputation for research in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and this expertise influences this course which explores current research and practice in artificial intelligence and robotics. This MSc can lead to a career such as a designer of intelligent systems or in research.

Why choose this course?

• Through your placement year you will gain industrial experience and be able to practice applying the skills you have learned throughout your studies.
• 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 Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.
• Advanced topics studied include artificial life with robotics, neural computation and machine learning, theory and practice of artificial intelligence.
• 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, 2022).

This course covers the three main disciplines of sport science: physiology (including nutrition), biomechanics and psychology. You’ll gain a fundamental understanding of physiology, anatomy, psychology, biomechanics, sports performance, biochemistry, nutrition, and strength and conditioning – and then apply your knowledge through practical classes and research. During your studies you’ll have many opportunities to use our state of-the art human performance labs, where you’ll learn to assess and improve sporting performance, as well as gain invaluable knowledge on the role exercise plays in improving health and wellbeing.

You’ll also develop the analytical, written and verbal skills expected by employers. The course is also aligned to  a vocational qualification accredited through the Register of Exercise Professionals (REPs) with the option after year one of becoming a qualified fitness instructor. Furthermore, this course is a National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) recognised undergraduate programme, allowing students to complete the Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist qualification near graduation.

Our excellent facilities ensure we can deliver a comprehensive programme of practical work to support lecture material. A focus on Personal Transferable Skills throughout the first and second year enables you to develop competence in a range of skill areas which will be of benefit professionally and personally and which are essential to success in a competitive employment market.

Other additional opportunities include

• Guest lecturers: e.g. GSK, HSV, Felicity Aston (first woman to walk the Antarctic solo)
• Work Experience: including local, national and international employers taking students for their work experience module in final year (e.g. football, rugby clubs, hospitals, other universities)
• Opportunities for students to support applied testing and research in the labs
• Opportunities to gain internationally recognised qualifications:
• Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (NSCA)
• ACSM Certified Exercise Physiologist

The School has a strong international reputation for research in this area and this expertise influences this course which explores current research and practice in artificial intelligence and robotics. This MSc can lead to a career such as a designer of intelligent systems or in research.

Graduates obtaining this award will be equipped to pursue research to PhD level, or to enter specialist employment in technically advanced and unpredictable working environments requiring sound judgment and the exercise of personal responsibility and initiative.

• The award offers the opportunity for you to study advanced research topics in computer science, normally across multiple specialisms, and comprehensive research methods, and to undertake an extended masters project on a cutting-edge research topic.
• 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 Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
• Advanced topics studied include artificial life with robotics, neural computation and machine learning, theory and practice of artificial intelligence.
• Taught by a highly-regarded and long-established computer science department.
• Sixty percent of our research impact in Computer Science and Informatics at the University of Hertfordshire has been rated at world-leading or internationally excellent in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014.