Politics and Social Change BA(Hons)

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Year 1 

In your first year we welcome you into the Global Challenges Lab where you learn how to design your own research projects and make films, podcasts and data visualisations. You will also take a range of modules that introduce you to key contemporary politics issues and debates.

Modules

• Foundations in World Politics

  This module will introduce you to a critical historical perspective on the modern international political system. You will examine how the peoples and governments of the world came to be linked through an imperial system by exploring major world events and processes of global history. By taking a long view of modern politics, the module is an opportunity for you to place world politics in its historical context. The key topics you will explore include the origins of the international political system, slavery, imperial and colonial expansion, anti-colonial resistance and liberation, global governance, controversy and historiography.

• Global Challenges Lab: The Global and the Local

  On this module you'll learn from local politicians, community organisations and activist groups about how key global challenges are manifested in Brighton & Hove. Online learning platforms are used to find out about these problems on a global level. You'll conduct a group research project on one of these issues alongside learning skills in data analysis and visualisation, and developing podcasting and filmmaking skills.  

• Introduction to Environmental Politics: Climate Catastrophe, Animal Extinction

  This module introduces key issues, concepts and theories relating to environmental politics. You will learn about key theoretical debates, including environmental justice, ecological modernisation, fossil capitalism and environmental ethics, as well as contemporary environmental issues such as extinction, climate crisis, resource politics and climate migration.

• Introduction to the  Global Challenges Lab

  Supported by a tutor, you'll design and conduct a research project that addresses one of the global challenges identified by the UN’s sustainable development goals. You'll learn how to create blogs, podcasts and short films to communicate your research and ideas to a non-academic audience.

• Politics in Practice

  This module introduces ideas about how politics is practiced by state and non-state actors at local, national, and international levels. You'll take part in field trips, Q+As with political actors and engagement with political communications. You'll also be introduced to methods of data collection, as well as forms of qualitative and quantitative analysis.

• Sex and Politics: Defining Contemporary Issues

  This module develops your understanding of sexuality and gender as central aspects of the struggle for social justice. Drawing on a range of approaches, you'll explore how inequalities related to sexuality and gender are inscribed and mobilised in national and global contexts related to citizenship, including law and policy. In addition to identifying problems, you will examine perspectives that theorise how gender and sexual inequality might be further challenged and reduced.

Year 2

In the second year of your Politics and Social Change degree you will continue your research in the Global Challenges Lab and learn how to write political speeches, policy papers and press briefings, and design social media campaigns. You'll begin to specialise in the subjects that interest you most through choosing option modules.

Modules

• UK Politics
• We, the People
• Global Challenges Lab: Research Communication
• Global Challenges Lab: Policy Solutions

 Options*

Choose one from:

• Creative Writing: Process and Craft
• Gender, Race and Environment
• Authority, Democracy and Justice
• Community Engagement
• Unruly Bodies: Understanding and Contesting Normativity

Choose one from:

• Gender and Sexuality
• Researching Politics
• Global Resistance: Social Movements and Mobilisation
• International Institutions
• Debating Community International Relations

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Final year

In your final year you will further develop your knowledge and skills working to develop a political campaign with an external third sector organisation, aimed at developing your thinking about how civil society groups can make interventions in the political sphere.

You also work on a major independent research project, supported by your academic supervisor. The project is an opportunity for you to develop an idea independently using your creative and digital skills. Option modules provide more opportunities to focus on subjects that interest and intrigue you.

Modules

• Social Change Project
• Activism and Social Change
• Participation, Performance and Politics OR Public Journalism

Options*

Choose one from:

• Community Placement: Theory into Practice
• Global Environmental Politics
• Global Social Policy
• Radical Political Economy and Anarchist Politics
• Race and International Relations

Choose two from:

• Politics in the Middle East
• Utopian Theory and Practice
• Psychology of Poverty
• Care, Ethics and Social Policy
• Politics of the Right

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Meet the team

Dr Rebecca Searle, course leader

Rebecca Searle’s work focuses on the ways in which scholarly research can be used to make critical interventions in the politics of the present. She established and co-ordinates the Housing Forum, an initiative to bring together academics, community organisations and policy makers to develop local solutions to the housing crisis. She leads the crowd sourced research project Who Owns Brighton?, that works with the community to uncover patterns of ownership and investment in a set of recent developments in the city. Her research interests include the housing crisis; the global history of contemporary capitalism; gender and sexuality; the politics of twentieth century Britain; and war and conflict in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She is a member of the Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories. Read Rebecca's full profile.

Other staff who teach on the course include: Dr Clare Woodford, Dr Heba Youssef, Dr Chris Wyatt, Prof Mark Devenney, Dr Robin Dunford, Dr German Primera Villamiza, Dr Chrystie Myketiak and Dr Zoe Sutherland.

Course fees

The fees listed here are for the first year of full-time study if you start your course in the academic year 2023–24.

You will pay fees for each year of your course. Some fees may increase each year.

UK undergraduate and some postgraduate fees are regulated by the UK government and increases will not be more than the maximum amount allowed. Course fees that are not regulated may increase each year by up to 5% or RPI (whichever is higher).

If you are studying part-time your fee will usually be calculated based on the number of modules that you take.

Find out more

• Fees, bursaries, scholarships and government funding info for UK and international undergraduate and postgraduate students
• Student finance and budgeting while studying
• About the university’s fees by checking our student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

Campus where this course is taught

Accommodation

Local area

Maps

Support and wellbeing

Sport at Brighton