Politics and Sociology BSc (Hons)

Compulsory

• SC1603 - Contemporary Challenges

  This module provides hands-on experience of how social and political science operates outside the university, focusing on Contemporary Challenges. Over ten weeks, you will work in small groups on applied research addressing real-world social, political, and institutional problems. The emphasis is on learning by doing, supported by mentoring, methods training, professional exposure, and structured reflection on skills development.

• SC1601 - Fundamentals of the Social Sciences

  This module will introduce you to key concepts, theories, thinkers and approaches in the social and political sciences and history. You will also learn the techniques used by a range of disciplines within the social and political sciences and history for gaining and validating knowledge of the social and political world.

• SC1604 - Special Subjects A

  In this module, you get to dive deep into your own area of study and experience the full range of subjects taught by Brunel Social and Political Sciences. As part of the module, you’ll take three classes – at least one from your degree subject, with the others chosen from across the department. Classes cover a huge range of topics, from media production to African history, crime investigation to the climate crisis – so you can gain new skills, explore pressing problems, and follow where your curiosity leads you. 

• SC1605 - Special Subjects B

  In this module, you get to dive deep into your own area of study and experience the full range of subjects taught by Brunel Social and Political Sciences. As part of the module, you’ll take three classes - at least one from your degree subject, with the others chosen from across the department. Classes cover a huge range of topics, from media production to African history, crime investigation to the climate crisis - so you can gain new skills, explore pressing problems, and follow where your curiosity leads you. 

Optional

• PP2636 - Climate Politics
  This module aims to enable students to attain a comprehensive understanding of key concepts and theories in the politics and political economy of climate change. It will provide students with resources to assist them in making informed judgments on a range of questions and debates.
• SO2610 - Colonialism, Migration and Global Racism
• SA2622 - Culture, Education and Learning

  This module explores key theoretical issues in the cross‑cultural study of education, examining how culture shapes learning and how educational practices, in turn, influence social and cultural life. It develops your ability to understand these processes ethnographically and highlights the value of a comparative approach to studying education across different contexts.

• SO2611 - Digital Culture

  This module considers the shape of new media technologies such as iPhones - has changed the basis of contemporary social life and culture. This module will examine some of the key transformations that are taking place through digital culture. Key aims of the module include:

  • an introduction to debates on digital culture and society;#
  • conceptual, analytical and practical resources to understand contemporary issues on digital culture;
  • the use of case studies to focus on debates around digital culture;
  • to consider the extent to which digital culture is changing social relations at local and global levels.
• PP2633 - Explaining Politics: Quantitative Political Science in Practice

  This modules aims to provide students with the skills to analyse political data and introduce methods for gathering and understanding data. Students will be encouraged to critically engage with the use of existing statistical data in political discourse and demonstrate the importance of quantitative analysis in domestic and international politics.

• PP2631 - From Student to Scholar: Successful Research in the Modern World

  Preparing students for their final year dissertation begins in the second year in From Student to Scholar: Successful Research in the Modern World. This module introduces students to a variety of analytical perspectives, research methods and techniques used in designing a research project in politics, international relations and international politics.

• SO2609 - Gender, Sexuality and Feminism
• CO2608 - Global Communication

  On this module, students will examine the ways in which the globalisation of communication has transformed social, political and economic relations. 

• PP2627 - Issues in American Politics
  This module aims to familiarise students with contemporary issues on the American political agenda and to demonstrate the ways in which politicians adapt policy stances and organisational and electoral strategies to accommodate change in the nature and direction of political debate. Students will be encouraged to adopt a more interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach to learning about American politics by examining social, moral, cultural and economic issues through a partisan political perspective.
• SA2624 - Middle East: Societies, Religion and Politics
• PX2XXX - Military History and Strategic Thought
• PP2628 - National Security Intelligence
  Students will receive an introduction and overview to the field of national security intelligence and examine in greater detail intelligence collection, analysis, counterintelligence, covert action, and other selected topics.
• PP26XX - Plato’s Republic
• CO2607 - Popular Culture and Creative Industries

  This module explores how meanings are developed through contemporary cultural representations, practices and processes, with a focus on creativity and the creative industries sector. It examines popular culture and the rise of the creative and cultural sector in late modernity drawing on relevant sociological, media and cultural studies debates and theories. 

• CO2605 - Researching Your World

  This module provides an advanced understanding of research methodologies, with a particular focus on data analysis. Equipping students with an understanding and appreciation of the important theoretical paradigms that underpin qualitative and quantitative social and communications research traditions. Furnishing students with the tools and skills required to conduct and evaluate their own empirical social and communications research.

• SO2614 - Sociology of Everyday Life: Issues in Contemporary Culture

  In this module you will consider the meanings of ordinary, ‘everyday’ processes and actions in society, by examining what everyday life consists of and the relevant academic debates and theories around it. The module will encourage you to reflect on your own everyday life through the lense of power, identity and gender in wider socio-cultural contexts.

• SA2625 - South Asia: Cultures, Societies and Development
• PP2629 - The State and Revolution
• PP2638 - Theories of International Relations

  This module introduces students to major theoretical approaches in the study of International Relations. These theories are employed to examine and understand contemporary actors in world politics such as states, international organisations, non-governmental actors as well as major issues and problems such as war, terrorism, climate change or nuclear proliferation. The aim is to give students a critical understanding of IR theory

Compulsory

• SC3602 - Advanced Research Skills for Social and Political Sciences

  This module introduces you to the research and writing process for your dissertation or Major Final Project, helping you build the reading, writing and analytical skills you’ll rely on throughout. It also guides you through the techniques for designing and carrying out a research project in your discipline, encouraging you to engage critically with the topic you choose.

• SC3601 - Dissertation

  To develop students’ abilities to plan, design and execute a research project in the subject area of their degree programme, to communicate their ideas and critically evaluate the success of their project. 

Optional

• SO3614 - Apocalypse! Crisis and Society
• SO3625 - Cities, Culture and Social Change

  This module introduces you to urban sociology and builds your understanding of how cities develop, how they’re lived in and how they’re represented. You’ll explore the relationship between space, culture and social life in contemporary cities, using theoretical tools and practical examples to bring those ideas to life.

• CO3617 - Digital Media, Social Movements and Change
• SA3631 - Environment and Sustainability
• PP3629 - European Union Politics: Problems and Prospects
  In this module students will discuss the development and functioning of the EU from its inception to the present day and be introduced to and learn to evaluate a range of theoretical perspectives on the EU’s creation, development and functioning. Students will examine a range of political problems in the European integration process, such as legitimacy, domestic and social impact, institutional and policy reform, enlargement, and future directions.
• SO3615 - Global Migration

  Equips students with an understanding of the key concepts in global migration including the causes and consequences of migration, national and international responses to migration and the diversity of migrant flows within a global context, using cases from both Global North and Global South contexts.

• PP3xxA - Great Power Competition: Russia, China and the USA
• PP5628 - International Development: Politics and Policy
• SO3617 - Lawyers, Guns and Money: Making the Modern World System
  This module aims to explore issues raised by historical and political sociology regarding the development of the modern world-system. In particular the course will focus upon the rise to dominance of Europe in the building of the modern world-system and the explanations offered for this.
• PP3631 - Marx and the Critique of Political Economy
  This module will introduce you to the work of Marx and his collaborator Engels and assist in developing a critical understanding of Marx’s major work Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. You will engage with primary sources in political thought.
• PP3623 - Media, Politics & Power in America

  This module seeks to familiarise students with the contemporary issues agenda in American politics. It seeks to demonstrate the ways in which politicians and institutions adapt policy stances and organisational strategies to accommodate changes in the nature, content and direction of political debate.

• GY3610 - Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking
• PP3621 - Parliamentary Studies

  This module aims to provide students with a detailed understanding of the UK Parliament by examining its structure, internal processes, and different committees, and to give students an understanding how to transfer the skills they have acquired when thinking about social, historical and political issues to practical ongoing issues that parliament is encountering in its committees or in legislation it is devising.

• CO3xxD - Politics and Digital Cultures
• PP3640 - Political Economy of the Changing World Order
• CO3xxC - Political Satire and Comedy

  This module provides students with a sophisticated and critical knowledge and understanding of the relationships between politics, satire and comedy. These relationships are explored in relation to their institutional, historical and social contexts and their textual conventions. The module explores political satire and comedy as it exists in a broad range of texts (e.g. television, cartoons, live stand-up and digital comedy). The module equips students with appreciation and understanding of the continuities and changes in political satire and comedy in national and global political systems and international relations, and its relationship with concepts of political power and hegemony. 

• PP3634 - Public Policy Analysis

  How do governments make public policy? Why do public policies vary across countries? How can public policy be analysed? These are the questions that will be explored in this module. The module will provide the participants with a strong theoretical foundation for analysing public policy and skills to communicate the analyses to non-academic stakeholders in public policy.

• PP3622 - Terrorism and Counterterrorism
  This module aims to address a series of empirical questions regarding the causes, conduct, and consequences of campaigns of terrorism in the modern world. You will gain an understanding of a series of key debates in the social science literature.
• PX3626 - The Arab-Israeli Conflict