Politics, Sexuality and Gender BA(Hons)

Year 1 

In your first year, you will study five core modules that introduce you to the subject area, including specialist modules covering key approaches to the study of politics, sexuality and gender. You will also choose an option module.

Modules

Core 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.

• 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.

• Introduction to Politics, Sexuality and Gender

  This module foregrounds the centrality of sexuality and gender for understanding politics. You will be introduced to theoretical and conceptual approaches related to the field, with an emphasis on how political activity in this area has transformed political agendas and produced new ways of understanding the world. It draws on feminist, gender, sexuality, queer and trans studies, as well as political science, international relations, sociology and critical theory.

• 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.

Options*

• Comparative Political Systems

  On this module you will be introduced to some of the key features of politics including institutions, political actors and political processes. You'll identify the most important political hallmarks, for example: the legislature, the executive, political parties, and electoral processes, in at least two contemporary states that illustrate democratic, partially democratic, or/and authoritarian political systems. You'll also be introduced to political concepts, such as power and the state, in order to analyse and compare those political systems.

• Environmental Politics: Institutions, Actors, Animals and Movements

  This module introduces the key institutions, protocols and movements central to understanding the contested global spaces of global environmental politics. You'll consider the wide range of organisations that contest these institutional orders, putting into question the very idea of an institution. These range from organisations with a long history such as Greenpeace through to more recent protest movements including Extinction Rebellion and La Via Campesina.

• Democracy

  This module introduces you to the histories and contexts within which the concept and practice of democracy developed. You will study classical, republican, liberal, anarchist, Marxist, communitarian and global conceptualisations of democracy, in each case examining their relevance to our current political circumstances. You will explore the cultural preconditions for democratic freedoms and the representation of democratic values in different social and political movements.

• Globalisation, Conflict and the Environment

  This module introduces key concepts, theories and questions in international relations and global studies. You will interrogate and evaluate the political implications of different approaches for the study of key aspects of our contemporary world. You will explore how concepts and theories are applied to contested global issues, such as environmental sustainability and war/conflict. 

• 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.  

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

Year 2

In year two of your Politics, Sexuality and Gender degree you build your knowledge of the subject. You explore contemporary theories and practices of government and policy and examine key thematic issues relating to sexuality and gender, including the relationship between bodies and power. You'll get to specialise in the subjects that interest you most through choosing optional modules.

Core modules

• UK Politics
• We, the People
• Unruly Bodies: Understanding and Contesting Normativity

Options*

• Queer Writing
• Gender, Race and Environment
• Global Challenges Lab: Research Communication
• Community Engagement
• Authority, Democracy and Justice

• Global Challenges Lab: Policy Solutions
• Debating Contemporary International Relations
• Gender and Sexuality
• Researching Politics
• Global Resistance: Social Movements and Mobilisation
• International Institutions

*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, with a specific focus on the future and progressive change. You will explore the place of sexuality and gender in contemporary theories of social transformation and work with an external campaigning organisation to develop your understanding of how civil society groups can make interventions in the political sphere.

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

Modules

• Social Change Project OR Dissertation
• Activism and Social Change
• Sexual Utopias: Imagining Radical Futures

Options*

Choose one from:

• Community Placement: Theory in Practice
• Global Social Policy
• Radical Political Economy and Anarchist Politics
• Language, Gender and Sexuality
• Race and International Relations

Choose one from:

• Politics of the Right
• Colonialism, Capitalism and Climate Crisis
• Feminisms
• Psychology of Poverty
• Care, Ethics and Social Policy

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

Meet the team

Joanna's current research explores the relationship between theories of subjectivity and Critical Theory. She is interested in how understandings of subjectivity shape both social policy and critical theories of emancipation, with a particular focus on ideas about child development, gender, intersectionality and care.

More broadly, her research interests include psychoanalytic theory and praxis; psychoanalysis and social justice; the politics of mental health; Critical Theory; feminist theory; gender studies; cultural studies; the politics of reproduction and care. Read Joanna'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.

International requirements and visas

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Visas and immigration advice

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 govt 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

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