Bachelor of Science (Hons) in International Relations

at University of Plymouth United Kingdom

The study of human behaviour and relationships creates a lens through which to see the world better. At Plymouth, you’ll hold that lens to the world around you so you can play a positive role in it. Here we look inwardly at our surroundings as much as we look beyond them, and you’ll spend time immersed on the streets of the city you’re living in, putting Plymouth society under the microscope. See how change is made by working with local support groups and projects like Landworks.

Key Features

• Learn from passionate and committed academics with active and wide-ranging research expertise. Our research and specialisms include health, well-being and social policy alongside politics and identities. .
• Explore a wide-range of topics including sustainability, tourism, health and wellbeing, media, deviance, work and employment, gender and sexuality, global development, methodological innovations, philosophy of social science and food, culture and society.
• Apply sociological theory to contemporary issues in an interactively taught environment.
• Explore and experience first-hand the world beyond the classroom with national and international field trips and exchange opportunities.
• Engage in a pioneering, well established work-based learning programme along with voluntary opportunities to enhance your employability.
• Develop key transferable skills that employers actively seek through novel research methods training.
• Benefit from studying with a faculty of highly regarded staff who engage in innovative and experiential learning spaces.
• Experience varied and engaging assessment formats supported through personal tutoring.
• Join a course where overall student satisfaction is consistently rated at over 90% in the National Student Survey (NSS), as reported by DisoverUni. The latest NSS results show 100% overall student satisfaction.*
• Know that your teaching and learning is informed by prominent research, with 62%of our research rated as world leading or internationally excellent (Source: Research Excellence Framework, 2014).

Our MA Photography programme engages with contemporary practices in image-making, writing and curating through eco-critical and post-human perspectives.
This outward-facing programme prepares you for professional opportunities in the fields of exhibition, curation and publication. Intensive periods of studio-based workshops, symposia, lectures, online tutorials, and visits to studios, galleries and research centres provide the basis of the learning experience.

Key Features

This one year MA Architectural Design program explores architecture, design and urbanism, with an emphasis on the critical investigation of space through practical, theoretical research interests and creative activities. Design is the crucial agency for exploring spatial creativity, coupled with an experimental design practice that operates from a core architectural discipline, yet celebrates the blurring of disciplinary boundaries to forge innovation and new disciplines in spatial enquiry.

You will undertake architectural design studio projects that immerse you within spatial debates and cross-disciplinary activities, including working on live projects, community engagement and public events. Supporting your work in the design studio, you will engage with emerging research in architecture, connecting sustainable practices and integrated technology. You will generate a dissertation through detailed design development of a selected aspect of your design studio work. Support is provided in the design studio through weekly tutorials, workshops and seminars. All students will be encouraged to develop a personal and critical path of design discovery. The studio culture fosters a unique design-led research practice, converging theory, design and technology.

Key features

• Encouraging discovery and critical development in a studio-based culture that fosters a unique research-led practice, converging theory, practice and technology.
• Co-taught with the RIBA-validated Part II programme, sharing coursework, projects and studio space.
• Advances the understanding of the role architectural design plays in today’s most pressing societal, environmental and cultural challenges.
• Encompasses a wide range of skills, theory and practice from urban situation to building performance.
• Develops the capacity to conceptualise spatial thought in relation to architectural design and production at all levels of design, fabrication and use.
• Framed by issues of place, people, tectonics and environmental concerns

Do you have the ambition to develop the electrical power systems and renewable energies of tomorrow? Whether focused on embedded microcontrollers, power converters, or high frequency communications, you’ll be developing your understanding of the high-level aspects of electronics on the BEng course. Electrical and electronic engineering, accredited by The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), will provide you with a solid foundation for engineering a wide range of electrical systems.

You will balance teaching sessions with hands-on practical experiences throughout the course. You’ll draw on our strong industry links and benefit from industry participation in course development, delivery and project sponsorship. You’ll take advantage of our flexible course, allowing you to switch between electronics and robotics until your final year, as your interests develop.

Have you Considered

• MEng (Hons) Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• BEng (Hons) Robotics

Key Features

• 100% of our graduates said they were satisfied with the quality of their degree in the 2019 National Student Survey (first place) and that the course provided opportunities to apply what was learnt. No doubt because from the day you join us until the day you graduate you’ll be testing and applying everything you learn in our fantastic labs.*
• Immerse yourself in a degree accredited by the Institution for Engineering and Technology (IET) to meet the educational requirements for chartered engineer (CEng) status after some additional learning, either workbased or further advanced study.
• Ranked 14th overall in the country for electrical engineering (Guardian league tables 2020).
• Develop highly practical skills and learn through doing. 
• Draw on our strong industry links and benefit from industry participation in course development, delivery and project sponsorship.
• Take advantage of our flexible course, allowing you to switch between electronics and robotics until your final year, as your interests develop.  
• Benefit from free IET membership (while at University) as the University is an IET Academic Partner.
• Take part in our final year student project open day, showcasing the excellence of the engineering skills development and the high levels of achievement of our undergraduates, with many industrially sponsored prizes awarded.
• Balance laboratory sessions with hands-on practical experiences throughout the course. 
• Develop your skills, with opportunities throughout your degree to build and program embedded systems, advanced mobile communications devices, and solar power systems.
• Hone your expertise in your final year project, offering you a chance to design and develop an original system or device on the theme of your choice.
• Demonstrate your abilities to future employers with your final year project. Many of our graduates quote this aspect as having helped them get a good job.
• Access one of the largest undergraduate laboratory spaces in the country, which you can use to further your own understanding of communications, electronics and renewable energy technologies. 
• Receive electronic tools for studying.
• Transfer to MEng is possible after the first or second year following the demonstration of an excellent overall achievement. 
• Study a broad range of topics from electrical and electronics, power, communications and microprocessors before choosing your final year project to gain expertise and experience in a specialist area.
• To complement your formal learning we offer regular PALS sessions that provide the opportunity for you to learn with and from your peers. Share knowledge, discuss ideas, and ask questions in a relaxed and friendly environment.

Our interior design course focuses on how design responds to the surrounding environment. We explore design interventions in existing buildings and neglected spaces with a hands-on approach to crafting their interiors. We study the space between object and architecture and promote an adaptive re-use approach to shaping the world around us with human, social, economic and environmental sustainability embedded in our process.

Key Features

• Teaching is in small groups with the studio culture run like a design practice with innovative delivery including flipped classroom, podcasts and team teaching.
• Work alongside students from our Product and Furniture Design course in our vibrant studio with individual desk space and CAD stations.
• You’ll build up a portfolio with fresh projects starting every few weeks. Assessments are 100% coursework – so no exams.
• Culture trips to Europe and study exchanges in Japan, USA, India or Italy are also possible.
• Engage with real clients with live projects. We’ve recently run projects with Vitra, John Lewis, Red Paddle, UPP, architects Willmore Iles and Herman Millar.
• Gain valuable industry experience through our competitions, studio visits, visiting lecturers and our meet the supplier visits.
• BA (Hons) Interior Design: is professionally accredited by the Chartered Society of Designers.

Smart urban futures is a unique and innovative new MA programme that will equip you to address design challenges at the boundaries between smart technologies and urban design and planning. You will gain skills in IoT, smart technologies, open data, 3D fabrication, augmented reality and virtual reality complimented by core teaching in urban design, planning and placemaking.

Through a design lab approach, you will develop digital prototyping and place-making projects that respond to the opportunities and needs of digital living, transport, health, mobility, governance and sustainability in a holistic approach to smart urban futures

Key Features

Set yourself up for a successful career in early years education, developing the professional skills you’ll need to teach in schools and other settings in this sector. Shaped by our own research expertise, this course supports you in the study of education throughout the primary phase, and specialising in different forms of education for children from three to seven years old.

Have you considered

• BEd (Hons) Primary (KS1/KS2 with QTS)
• BEd (Hons) Primary (Special Educational Needs with QTS)

Key Features

• Launch your career: obtaining integrated Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), which means you can begin your teaching career immediately. Expand your horizons, enhance your practical experience and set yourself above the competition.
• FS/KS1 focus area: this degree will look at teaching the ages from 3–7 but also look at the way the Foundation Stage feeds into KS1 and KS2 preparing you to work with children from any phase of primary education.
• No exams: learn through interactive workshops and with no end-of-year/semester exams.
• Close links to the Master of Education (MA Ed): this link enables students to achieve enhanced career progression in a profession in which masters level attainment is increasingly valued.
• Work based learning opportunities: students benefit from a wide range of placement types within our partnership of over 500 schools and other settings, from single days to extended block placements to develop and consolidate QTS standards.
• Professional identity: from the very start of the programme you are considered as a teacher in development. The programme supports you as you develop your professional standards and identity.
• Research-informed teaching: not only are all modules enhanced by tutors’ active research interests but students are immersed in a research culture and benefit from learning about the advantages of researching their practice first hand.
• Student support: within the Plymouth Institute of Education there is a strong ethos of support for all students. Your professional tutor will actively engage with you throughout the BEd programme to offer guidance and support in both academic and pastoral terms.
• OfSTED recognised: recent inspection rated the Primary ITE provision at Plymouth as good in all aspects, with particular strengths in the partnership led elements of the programmes and the quality of the graduates

Hydrography is crucial to the sustainable management of marine environments. Yet there is an international shortage of hydrographic surveyors, data processors and analysts, during a period when technology is rapidly advancing. Seize this opportunity to gain a thorough knowledge of the science and technology of hydrography, experiencing the practical application of modern methods and equipment involved in exploring and managing the seabed whilst preparing for a career in this growth area.

Key Features

Are you motivated by a desire to understand processes in the world’s oceans that drive phenomena such as ocean circulation, ocean acidification, sea-level rise or coastal erosion? If so, this course prepares you for a career in applied oceanography, coastal zone management or scientific research. You’ll develop the practical skills needed to collect and analyse data from the marine environment alongside an advanced understanding of ocean dynamics and processes contributing to shoreline change.

You will participate in practical activities during field work in Plymouth Sound, and further afield during the residential field week. You’ll benefit from access to a range of high specification oceanographic instrumentation that you will be trained to independently prepare, deploy and recover. You’ll pursue optional subjects that interest you most.

Have you considered

• BSc (Hons) Ocean Exploration and Surveying

Key Features

• In the 2019 National Student Survey, 100 per cent expressed overall satisfaction with the course; 100 per cent of students felt staff on this course were good at explaining things; 100 per cent felt that the staff made the subject interesting and 100 per cent found the course intellectually stimulating.*
• Participate in practical activities during field work in Plymouth Sound, and further afield during the residential field week.
• Benefit from access to a range of high specification oceanographic instrumentation that you will be trained to independently prepare, deploy and recover.
• Pursue optional subjects that interest you most from a range including meteorology, remote sensing, marine conservation, hydrographic surveying, modelling ocean processes and marine pollution.
• Progress into work in oceanographic research and consultancy, coastal zone management and related marine-science industries such as the emerging field of marine renewable energy.
• Develop your range of practical skills with our own fully-equipped fleet of boats, a new £4.65 million Marine Station used as a base for fieldwork afloat and industry-standard oceanographic and surveying equipment.
• Choose to take the industry-recognised professional diving qualification (HSE Professional SCUBA) alongside your degree and an optional scientific diving module to provide training and qualification for diving-based research projects and employment (limited places and additional costs apply).
• Experience an overseas field course that integrates ocean science knowledge and understanding from across the different sub-disciplines to address real-world issues.

Mental health nurses have a unique and profound impact on the lives of the people they care for, building and maintaining therapeutic relationships across all aspects of people’s lives. You'll gain the clinical and communication skills required to support the individual within their own recovery process. You'll develop the knowledge and experience to work within community, primary and acute care settings, and gain the confidence to help clients take the first steps to changing their lives.

Alongside preparing you to be an expert mental health nurse, our program recognises that all nurses need to be able to work with people suffering from physical health conditions and learning disabilities across the lifespan. We will give you a broad range of knowledge and skills pertinent to all the fields of nursing. This will include detailed knowledge of physical health care and essential physical nursing procedures as well as the skills to work with people who have learning disabilities.

Four year MNurs Degrees
Our four year MNurs programme allows you to study at masters level and choose two fields of nursing to register within

• MNurs (Hons) Nursing (Adult Health and Child Health)
• MNurs (Hons) Nursing (Adult Health and Mental Health) 
• MNurs (Hons) Nursing (Child Health and Mental Health)

Key Features
Achieve a bachelors honours degree and register as a nurse with the Nursing and Midwifery Council in mental health enabling you to progress on to a rewarding career and work in a range of healthcare settings nationally or internationally. You’ll have a balanced learning experience with a wide and innovative range of teaching and assessment methods both in academic study and in practice. Your time with us will enable you to work with a range of allied health professions and other fields of nursing.

• Experience a course that teaches contemporary and innovative mental health practice.
• Focus on developing your interpersonal skills and the importance of building therapeutic relationships.
• Equip yourself with the knowledge and confidence to graduate with professional status as a registered mental health nurse.
• Qualify with outstanding employment opportunities in a profession that offers excellent career progression.
• Enjoy an accessible approach to your theoretical studies, with the option of studying in Plymouth, our Knowledge Spa campus in Truro or at our new University of Plymouth School of Nursing in Exeter.
• Experience clinical placements across Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, designed to maximise your range of experiences and clinical skills.