Sociology (with placement year)

Our BSc Sociology degree teaches students the theories and methods needed to understand how individual identities, behaviours and lives are shaped by the processes and structures that give rise to exclusion and inequity in modern society.

The course will help you ask and answer key social questions, such as:

• How do societies change? How are these changes related to processes of globalization, migration, shifts in gender roles and religious beliefs, digital technologies, social movements and economic and cultural transformations?

• How do social theories help us to understand complex processes, such as how power operates in society? How do different understandings of power translate into different societies, policies and ways of regulating intimate relations?

• How can we analyse society, its structures, people’s beliefs and experiences? How do different methods capture different aspects of social reality from correlations between social class and educational opportunities to the emotional effects of social media?

During the BSc Sociology course you will explore a variety of social phenomena in depth, such as gender, social class and inequalities, race and racism, consumption, health, digital technologies. You will develop a detailed understanding of the social world through learning classical and contemporary social theories and will acquire practical social research methods skills from surveys, interviews and focus groups to visual methods and online ethnography.

For a full list of areas studied, see the 'What You'll Study' section of the course page on our website.

Assessment is carried out using a number of different methods.

The type of method depends on the nature of the module. They include: examinations, essays, mini research projects, oral presentations, group presentations, in-class tests, multiple choice examinations, independent work exercises and a dissertation.