Bachelor of Science (Hons) in International Relations with Politics

at University of Plymouth United Kingdom

Understand the roles of democracy, freedom and security in the 21st century near the site of the 2021 G7 Summit. Our programme is not just about helping you understand politics and international relations; it's about building your critical thinking to empower you to be part of a change. Hone your skills with our unique practical assessments that immerse you in mock-ups of real-world scenarios. Our students have gone on to key policy and political roles locally and nationally.

Key Features

• We’re very proud of our National Student Survey (NSS) 2019 return showing overall satisfaction for 100% of our students. 100% of students agreed staff were good at explaining things and also that the course is intellectually stimulating.*
• Develop specific knowledge of the discipline of politics – understand the significance and nature of political processes, the variety of forms of government and the concepts that inform their operation.
• Engage with political institutions and processes to acquire a detailed knowledge of these systems and how they interact. You’ll use current affairs as case studies to bring broader principles to life.
• Take part in debates on contemporary international relations and have the opportunity to study a number of relevant themes and issues, which may include; international security, north-south international relations, international political economy, the United Nations, refugee studies, foreign policy, theory and area studies such as Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia.
• Learn from research-active staff, leading the way in their subjects. Members of the team are internationally renowned for their work on elections and electoral systems and ethnopolitics.
• Enhance your employability by taking part in extra-curricular events and talks organised by the student-run Politics and International Affairs society (PIASOC).
• Open doors to a wide range of career opportunities including journalism, advertising, teaching, non-governmental organisation work and academia.

Podiatrists are experts in foot and ankle health keeping people of all ages active. Choosing to become a podiatrist will give you a broad scope of practice with a scientific approach to diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of people with foot problems. A podiatry degree can launch a dynamic career and is a springboard to specialising in other areas of the profession such as sports medicine, injection therapy, independent prescribing, clinical research and podiatric surgery.

As a podiatry graduate you will be a highly skilled health professional who can work confidently with a variety of different patients in a range of settings. Six months after finishing the course 95 per cent of our graduates were in work or further study with an average salary of £22,000 according to the 2019 Destination of Leavers from Higher Education survey (DLHE)

Key Features

• Employability rates are high within the podiatry profession with potential to work in the NHS, but also as an independent practitioner. 95 per cent of our students go on to work or study, with an average starting salary of £22,000 a year (2019 Discover Uni*).
• The course has been designed, and continues to be developed, by expert educationalists, service-users and carers.
• Work-based learning is an integral part of the course and you spend 1,000 hours in clinical practice during your three years.
• Opportunities to attend vascular ward rounds at Derriford Hospital.
• Observe an independent practitioner working in the private sector.
• A Ministry of Defence placement is available for high achievers.
• Practitioners with specialist roles are invited to lecture regularly in years 2 and 3.

Conserve our environment for future generations – work within the sector on an eight-week placement to reduce human impacts and provide solutions to today's environmental challenges across the globe. This MSc programme helps launch your career, giving you the skills and knowledge required for a job in the environment sector. Maximise your career prospects by learning the latest desk, laboratory and field techniques used in the management and assessment of environmental impact.

Do you want to help women have the best pregnancy and birth possible? This course equips you with the skills, knowledge and professional insight needed to become a registered midwife. Whether it’s helping clients before labour, or giving support to new mothers, you’ll learn through doing - building your confidence as you go. You’ll also discover the social and cultural influences that shape maternity care today, so you graduate ready to excel as a fully-rounded healthcare professional.

Become a 'Registered Midwife' with the Nursing and Midwifery Council as soon as you successfully complete the course. Midwives are highly employable, some midwives choose careers in specialist clinical roles or midwifery education and research.

Key Features

• Become a 'Registered Midwife' with the Nursing and Midwifery Council as soon as you successfully complete the course.
• Spend 55 per cent of your time learning through doing, in a range of real placements, in partnership with real clients.
• Learn how to work as part of a multi-professional  team.
• Build confidence through clinical skills and theory sessions, priming you to be at your best when working directly with real clients.
• Extend your skills in IT, numeracy and literacy to support your clinical and professional midwifery practice.
• Learn about the psychological and social impacts of having a baby and how to effectively communicate with and support your clients.
• Develop a critical approach to research, enabling you to provide evidence-based care.
• Enhance your employability with modules in mentorship and newborn examination.
• Develop the professional knowledge, skills and attributes to enable you to work as an autonomous practitioner fit for the future.

A marine biology degree with an international reputation, you’ll explore the diversity of marine life from the coast to the deep-sea. Using a range of marine organisms from the smallest microbes to the largest marine vertebrates, you'll learn how marine species and ecosystems function, consider why we see such diversity of life in our oceans, and learn how to conserve this. You'll tackle big questions like how are humans and climate change affecting marine biodiversity?

Using some of the best marine facilities in Europe alongside field work in the marine and coastal habitats of Devon, France and South Africa, and the option of becoming an HSE diver, you'll gain arguably the best practical experience of any marine biology course. By the end of your degree, your wide-range of skills and in-depth knowledge of marine biology will allow you to tackle the most pressing environmental challenges that marine systems are facing.

Key Features

• We’re very proud of our National Student Survey (NSS) 2019 return including that 94% of student respondents said that staff made the subject interesting. Other feedback included 100% also agreeing that our staff are good at explaining things and that the course was intellectually stimulating.*
• Add an exciting extra dimension to your marine studies by examining marine organisms and ecosystems in a truly global context. If you are interested in how marine and coastal habitats work, why they are so diverse and how best to conserve them, this is the course for you.
• Access the University’s research vessels based in the Plymouth Sound Special Area for Conservation and our Marine Station.
• Benefit from our reputation as an international centre for marine and environmental research. Our expert teaching staff are active researchers and enthusiastic specialists in their fields.
• Study marine life in the wild with access to the beautiful and varied Devon and Cornwall coastline. A recent World Wildlife Fund report highlighted the South Devon coast – which can be reached on foot from campus – as the area of highest marine biodiversity in the UK.
• Deepen your experience through practical field and laboratory work, linked to lectures – something regularly praised by our external examiners. Our specialist facilities include advanced molecular and behavioural laboratories, a seawater aquarium, environmentally controlled labs and a new bespoke marine station opening in 2014/15.
• Increase your knowledge and apply your skills in an international setting, with two residential field courses abroad (France and South Africa – one of the most biodiverse places on earth), giving you the chance to study organisms and ecosystems not found in the UK.
• Develop a wide range of skills that will prepare you for your chosen career and make you attractive to employers – learn how to ask and answer research questions, and how to apply this skill to conservation challenges in the real world.  There is also the opportunity to gain the HSE PRO SCUBA qualification, for those with a suitable background in diving.
• Immerse yourself in Plymouth’s marine research culture. Alongside the University the city is home to several other world-leading establishments, one of the largest concentrations of marine science study in Europe. Take opportunities to gain extra experience working in one of the marine organisations located in Plymouth, alongside your studies.
• Take the opportunity to contribute to the latest research and advances in the field – many of our students have their research projects published in leading international peer-reviewed journals.
• Choose from a wide range of subjects that most interest you and are best suited to your intended career path, building your own specialisms and skills.
• LABplus is a unique open access laboratory and resource centre designed for students studying science and engineering courses. The lab provides a flexible workspace, computing facilities, specialist software, access to microscopes, microscope cameras and bespoke resources.

Discover why art from the past still matters to our modern society in the city that spawned Joshua Reynolds, the first president of the Royal Society. Learn what art can teach us about the past and how it can help us shape a better future. Build links with art historians and archivists and prepare for a career in the art world through our connections with high profile, international institutions like the National Gallery and Tate Britain, and benefit from the contacts of our published academics.

Key Features

• Art throughout history. Art history at Plymouth enables you to explore our complex past and navigate visual culture. Let our immersive modules take you across the world, from the Renaissance period to the present, from 14th-century fresco painting in Italy to artistic responses to the atomic bomb.

Experience research-informed education by exploring the scientific basis of human health, disease and therapeutics. You'll benefit from a rich and varied learning environment that highlights recent developments and examines how these inform clinical and diagnostic practice. Receive the input of internationally-recognised researchers and NHS staff and open up a range of employment opportunities in both industrial and public research laboratories.

You will stand out with a degree accredited by the Institute for Biomedical Science (IBMS) and benefit from an option to transfer to BSc (Hons) Applied Biomedical Science at the end of your second year, complete a yearlong NHS placement and work as a professional NHS Biomedical Scientist. You will enjoy our unique open access laboratory and resource centre designed for students studying science and engineering courses and have the opportunity to experience more with an optional placement year.

Key Features

• Stand out with a degree accredited by the Institute of Biomedical Science (IBMS).
• Delivered by the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry and enhanced by links with healthcare professionals.
• Develop practical skills, critical thinking and professional competence.
• Taught components of the course are enriched by the varied research activities of staff within the school.
• LABplus is a unique open access laboratory and resource centre designed for students studying science and engineering courses. The lab provides a flexible workspace, computing facilities, specialist software, access to microscopes, microscope cameras and bespoke resources. 
• Experience more with an optional placement year.
• Gain a positive learning experience within a work setting that will support your studies and future employability – the school offers 12 work placements between Stage 2 and the final year of your programme.
• Ten research summer placements are available between the first and second year and 20 between the second and final year. These competitive placements are available for students who demonstrate excellent performance in their studies and allow students to gain valuable research experience within the Biomedical Research Group.

Whether you want to be a financial forecaster, a researcher or even a future leader of industry, our lively and involving economics courses prepare you for success. Develop the ability to analyse economic information through theoretical and practical research-based modules, and gain essential analytical and numerical skills. We also offer a range of named economics courses with slightly different emphases aimed at those with firm career aspirations.

Key Features

• All of our named awards share a core syllabus, stressing the integration of theory and evidence in economic analysis and research.
• Engage with current and past students with our Economics Society, and hear talks from visiting academics and professionals.
• We are one of a small number of institutions with a modern computer suite containing dedicated Bloomberg terminals giving you access to financial data and information.
• Join the Devon Junior Chamber and receive training and professional mentoring.
• Apply your skills in a work environment and take our optional placement year.
• Think sustainably – in your final year you may choose to take modules covering environmental and resource economics, analysing the issue of environmental and resource scarcity and the possible policy responses to market failure.

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

BA (Hons) Creative Media launches you on a journey to make media that shapes, reflects and changes the world we live in. Our industry-facing course develops your creative voice, engages with communities on social issues and provides a practical grounding in professional media practices. Learn from experts skilled in narrative, documentary and artistic media practices – from film, photography and animation to interactive and immersive media, projection mapping and online media production.

Key Features

• Freedom to experiment – you can choose to focus on one medium, develop several or integrate across the range to find your own creative voice. You’ll have the opportunity to develop projects to suit your own creative and career ambitions.
• Open doors to your future career by showcasing your work to the public in exhibitions, and developing a portfolio of work. You can enhance your professional profile further by engaging with our live briefs.
• Advance your technical skills using our outstanding equipment and facilities including a fully equipped cinema, moving image studio with green screen, photographic and sound studios, computer labs, animation rostrums and much more.
• Learn from award-winning tutors from industry, arts practice and academic research.
• Tailor your degree to match your interests and career goals with an option to specialise in television in your final year.
• Benefit from strong links with the industry such as the BBC, ITV and Royal Television Society along with regional arts and community groups, giving you the opportunity to develop and realise creative collaborations beyond the University.
• This course is assessed by coursework only – there are no exams.
• Exchange programmes in Europe and the USA.
• Our alumni support current students with mentoring and career opportunities. Graduate Rachael Lyons, who has been Commercial Digital Producer for the X Factor is currently mentoring one of our stage 3 students on our professional mentoring scheme.
• Connect with current students and alumni in our dedicated Media arts Facebook group.