BSc (Hons) Criminology and Sociology

• Year 1

• In your first year you’ll explore various perspectives on criminology and examine theories on the causes of crime and deviance. You’ll develop an understanding of the criminal justice process in England and Wales, and examine crime in the context of economic, political and social frameworks. You’ll also study key sociological concepts and theories, with topics including poverty and social exclusion, work, community, religion, media, crime, education, globalisation, and consumer culture.

  Core modules

  • Being a Criminologist (CRM4001)

    This module is organised around the idea of the competent criminologist. It informs students about the constituent elements of competence, which include knowledge of crime, crime control and the wider contexts in which these are constructed; skills that facilitate the collection, use and critical analysis of academic, official and mediated sources of knowledge about crime; and values and ethics that inform both understandings and debates about crime and crime control. It seeks to provide students with a grounding of what it means to be a competent criminologist.

  • Introduction to Criminological Theory (CRM4002)

    This module introduces students to criminological theory. The module addresses the importance of theory in criminology, critically examines a range of criminological theories, and applies criminological thought to a variety of practical concerns throughout history, including contemporary social life.

  • Forensic Criminology: Police Investigations (CRM4004)

    This module introduces students to the processes, techniques and methods of criminal investigations which focuses on the police role from the crime scene to the courtroom. Students will be able to use skills learnt to carry out their own criminal investigation of a staged murder scenario. Important areas, such as crime scene investigation, forensic science and the use of evidence, are contextualised within the construction and prosecution of criminal cases. Students will also engage with criminal investigation topics such as professionalization, ethics, accountability, legitimacy, profiling and the media.

  • Responses to Crime: An Introduction (CRM4005)

    This module provides an overview of responses to crime in contemporary Britain. It examines responses to crime primarily in England & Wales, drawing upon comparative examples to explore similarities and differences. Its main focus is upon the criminal justice process, but the focus is also extended to approaches to crime founded upon different rationalities, such as restorative justice and risk management. This module will include two 2-hour talks that introduce our School and programme level employability related opportunities and support, including details of the optional placement year.

  • Social Identities and Inequalities (SOC4002)

    This module explores how and why social inequalities influence lived experience and social identities. It focuses on a range of substantive issues, such as poverty, social class and hierarchies, health, gender and sexuality, family and kinship, neo-colonialism and 'race', and violence and ethnicity. This module explores how these influence culture, social identities and lived experience throughout the life-course.

  • Introduction to Social Theory (SOC4004)

    This module introduces students to key features of classical social theory. These features are placed within the context of the Enlightenment, Modernity, the emergence of modern science and social science, and their use for contemporary social analyses.

• Year 2

• In your second year you’ll advance your awareness of criminological theory to understand social process that underpin crime and criminal justice. Your understanding of criminology will take you to consider beyond crime to include broader social harms. You’ll also extend your critical reasoning skills as you examine processes of social change and explore consumer culture, ethnicity, globalisation and politics and the State, in historical and contemporary perspective.

  Core modules

  • Theorising Crime and Harm (CRM5002)

    This module takes recent developments in criminological theory and analyses the potential for criminology as a discipline to contribute to understanding, contextualising and countering some of the greatest challenges facing society and the planet today. The emphasis on harm tests the boundaries of mainstream criminology, and encourages students to think beyond social and legal constructions of crime.

  • Critical Perspectives on Crime Control (CRM5004)

    This module examines a range of critical social scientific perspectives which have sought to make sense of crime control within its wider social context and in terms of its wider social significance. It considers the contributions of key social science theorists such as Stanley Cohen, David Garland, and Loic Wacquant and others whose work has focused upon crime control, and it seeks to apply their core ideas in order to illuminate our understanding of contemporary features of policy and practice.

  • Culture, Structure and Experience (SOC5001)

    This module explores the relationship between culture, social structure, social identities and lived experience. Drawing from and range of theoretical approaches it enables students to explore the relevance of the sociological imagination to understanding a range of contemporary socio-cultural topics and how these exemplify social change, identity, belonging and social exclusion.

  • Contemporary Social Theory (SOC5004)

    The module introduces contemporary disputes in social theory framed within the context of classical social theory. These debates are linked to historical events and social research that reciprocally influenced contemporary theoretical change. Foundational disciplinary questions are broached, and formative critical workshops assist in developing theoretical argument, analysis and evaluation.

  Optional modules

  • Stage 2 Professional Development, Placement Preparation and Identifying Opportunities (SSC500)

    This module is for students in the School of Society and Culture who are interested in undertaking an optional placement in the third year of their programme. It supports students in their search, application, and preparation for the placement, including developing interview techniques and effective application materials (e.g. CVs , portfolios, and cover letters).

  • Crime, Harm and Culture (CRM5009MX)

    The module aims to provide students with a critical appreciation of harm and crime by exploring relevant issues from film, television, music, fiction literature and art. By applying a criminological lens to different forms of popular culture, students will be able to examine a variety of media forms in terms of its content and its contemporary political, social and economic context using different theories and concepts.

  • Gothic Fictions: Villains, Virgins and Vampires (ENG5002MX)

    This module looks at eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels to trace the variety and scope of literary contributions to the Gothic. It begins by discussing the origins of the Gothic novel, then moves to the heyday of the genre in the revolutionary 1790s, on to authors writing in the early and mid-nineteenth century, through to the decadence of the 1890s.

  • ‘Hurt Minds’: Madness and Mental Illness in Literature (ENG5013MX)

    This module considers changing attitudes towards, and a variety of theories of, the mind, examining how different cultures have understood ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ mental states. It will look at how the experience and treatment of mental illness has been represented in fiction. The mind is at its most fascinating when it behaves outside of expected social norms. By considering a variety of literary texts over several centuries, this module explores shifts in the definition, understanding, evaluation, and management of exceptional mental states.

  • Writing Genre Fiction (ENG5017MX)

    This module takes students into in-depth engagement with prose fiction writing in various genres, with possibilities including fantasy, science-fiction, period/historical, young adult fiction, horror, comedy, romance, crime, and thriller. The module is taught through lecture, seminars, and workshops where students are asked to submit and feedback to peers and tutors on a regular basis.

  • Law in Context: Commerce and Intellectual Property (LAW5019MX)

    This module focuses on the work of commercial lawyers in practice in helping businesses to trade. It analyses a range of contractual agreements dealing with the manufacture, sale, supply and distribution of goods, assets and services in general and intellectual property in particular.

  • Play and Games for Performance (PER5008MX)

    This module will introduce students to practical methods for designing games and play structures for participatory performances that invite audiences to become actively involved in the work. In addition to learning new tools for designing and facilitating play, students will be prompted to consider playfulness from a theoretical perspective, recognising the connection between the play of mimesis and theatrical performance.

  • Politics Beyond Parliaments (PIR5013MX)

    This module analyses the role of civil society and the public sphere in democratic governance and in democratization from a variety of theoretical perspectives.

  • Voter Behaviour and Effective Election Campaigning (PIR5014MX)

    This module undertakes an advanced examination of contemporary trends and developments in theories of electoral behaviour globally; then more specifically the relationship between electoral rules, electoral systems and election outcomes; the evolution of campaign techniques, and the role, mechanics, and accuracy of opinion polls in modern electoral politics. These global understandings are applied directly to the case of British politics.

  • Harm in the 21st Century (CRM5003MX)

    This module explores the global challenges of harmful behaviours and activities in contemporary society by considering specific areas of concern for criminologists. By drawing on real-world examples in everyday life, the module examines how social problems and issues have arisen due to processes of globalisation that have changed the social, political and economic landscape of the 21st century.

• Optional placement year

• Gain valuable on-the-job experience through our optional placement year. We will support you in your second year in deciding whether to take this opportunity, and assist you in finding a placement and being prepared for it. 

  Core modules

  • School of Society and Culture Placement Year (SSC600)

    Students have the opportunity to gain work experience that will set them apart in the job market when they graduate by undertaking an optional flexible placement year. The placement must be a minimum of 24-weeks (which can be split between a maximum of two different placement providers) and up to a maximum of 48-weeks over the course of the academic year. The placement is flexible and can be undertaken virtually, part or full time and either paid or voluntary. This year allows them to apply and hone the knowledge and skills acquired from the previous years of their programme in the real world.

• Final year

• You have the option to take a placement year in your third year of study. In your final year, you’ll design and implement your own research project to produce your dissertation, working independently with the support of a member of our academic team. You will also study modules that reflect new, emerging trends in criminology that utilise current local, national and world issues. This includes green criminology, leisure and deviancy, violence and harm, justice in practice, social change and global issues such as state crime, war and terrorism. Or you can explore sociology in greater depth through modules including the mass media, drugs in society, health and the body.

  Core modules

  • Dissertation (SOC6000)

    This module provides students with the opportunity to undertake their own sociological or criminological research project, working independently but under the supervision of an academic member of staff.

  Optional modules

  • Experiential Learning Opportunities (CRM6004B)

    This is an employability-focused module. It provides students with opportunities to gain practical insights into the knowledge and skills of practitioners, and/or the workings of key social and State institutions (and related) organisations, via engagement with either short work-based placements, practical short courses, or participation in applied research projects, depending upon the annual availability of opportunities in each. Students will be encouraged to link such insights with their social science knowledge and understanding.

  • Working for Justice (CRM6006)

    This module supports students to reflect on the knowledge, skills and experience that they have acquired throughout their degree/extra-curricular activities, in order to focus on their vision for future employment and related activities. Students will engage with academics, careers and employability staff and practitioners working within the criminal justice field, and so develop concrete ideas for their pathways into employment and/or ongoing study.

  • Leisure, Consumerism and Harm (CRM6008)

    This module explores contemporary developments within the study of leisure and consumerism, offering a theoretically informed understanding of key issues at the forefront of the discipline. Students will have the opportunity to study the changing nature of criminology’s engagement with leisure against a backdrop of global consumer capitalism.

  • Fear, Crime and Control in the City (CRM6009)

    This module critically examines steadfast and emergent social issues at the interplay between social control and the social, providing students with a critical understanding of how the social is regulated socially, culturally and legally. We will do this by looking as social issues in urban space. We will explore meanings, cultural significance, and political consequences from a criminological perspective.

  • Media, State and Society (SOC6001)

    The media occupy key arenas whereby various social groups compete with one another to set public, political, commercial and cultural agendas. This module examines the relationship between media, state and society. It covers a number of substantive topic areas such as environmental issues, terrorism, war reporting, gender, crime and violence.

  • Food, Culture and Society (SOC6002)

    This module aims to provide a critical understanding of sociological issues relating to food and foodways, (the beliefs and behaviours surrounding the production, distribution and consumption of food both on an individual and collective level). The module encourages critical reflection and practical experience of research in the area of food and foodways, with a focus on lived experience.

  • The Politics of Wasted Lives (SOC6003)

    The module explores contemporary theories of the emergence of surplus populations and how aspects of Modernity actively ‘wastes’ or makes superfluous the lives of outcast communities (eg. refugees, slum communities, segregated, concentrated and incarcerated peoples). Students critically reflect upon the political and ethical dimensions of social science for its part in Modernity’s processes and the wider impact social researchers have upon individuals and populations.

  • Gifts, Commodities and Crises: A contemporary guide to economic anthropology (ANT6003)

    This module that uses ethnographic evidence from across the world to examine how humans exploit their environments (and each other) to make a living. Focus will be on how “value” is socially produced, on how to make sense of the different ways in which people produce, distribute, consume, accumulate, and own resources, and on how economic practices interact with other spheres of society.

  • American Crime Writing (ENG6005MX)

    This module considers the development of twentieth-century American crime fiction from hard-boiled detectives, to myths of the mafia, and postmodern reinventions of the genre. This module will explore the cultural contexts of American crime writing, prevailing conventions of the genre, as well as challenges to those conventions.

  • Features Journalism Workshop (ENG6008MX)

    This module offers students an in-depth experience of professional writing. We will explore technique in features and literary journalism; music reviews, opinion columns and longer immersion features as well as other contemporary works of non-fiction feature writing, both short- and long-form, from sub-genres including profiles and interviews, autobiography and columns, travel writing, and reportage. We will learn to research and produce our own works of professional nonfiction and critically evaluate them.

  • Critical Hate Studies (CRM6012)

    This module presents the problem of ‘hate crime’ to students by identifying legislation, policy and practice that has been framed within its context in the UK and abroad. It will deconstruct the notion of hate crime and provide a critical reflection on the notion of ‘hate’ and its manifestations in late modernity.

  • Building Resilience: Countering Terrorism (CRM6013)

    This module provides students with an opportunity to explore the nature and contours of contemporary terrorist threats in a domestic and international context, and the infrastructures, policy frameworks, practices and technologies through which such threats are countered and responded to, both in the real and virtual worlds.

Every undergraduate taught course has a detailed programme specification document describing the course aims, the course structure, the teaching and learning methods, the learning outcomes and the rules of assessment.

The following programme specification represents the latest course structure and may be subject to change:

BSc Criminology and Sociology programme specification 7212