Compulsory modules

Understanding Crime, Understanding Criminal Justice
This module aims to lay the foundations for your criminological studies and to ignite your ‘criminological imagination’. The module introduces you to criminology as a subject, to where our understanding of ‘crime’ comes from, and to the ways in which criminological theories and ideas can help us to understand contemporary crime problems. You will also be introduced to theories of criminal justice and the work of, and relationships between, the main institutions of the criminal justice system.

Understanding Inequalities
How can we mobilise our sociological imagination to make sense of the social divisions and inequalities that persist across time and are reproduced in different cultures and societies? This module introduces the theoretical foundations of sociological thinking, tracing its origins as a 'science of society' to its contemporary applications in understanding inequality. You will learn to recognise how classical theories illuminate social divisions around race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability, through a discussion of the causes and impacts of wide-ranging forms of discrimination.

Optional modules

Murder, Death and Destruction
This module introduces you to the ways in which criminologists and criminal justice professionals attempt to theorise, contextualise and respond to the most serious forms of criminal and harmful behaviour in society (including murder, homicide, ‘public’ and ‘hidden’ forms of violence and abuse, state violence, and environmental crimes). You will be applying theory to current real-world incidents and engaging with issues such as age, gender, ethnicity, social exclusion and inequality, media representations, legal and evidentiary challenges, and preventative approaches.

Imagining Social Order and Deviance
Imagining Social Order and Deviance explores societal norms, values, and the construction of deviance through a series of real life case studies. You are invited to engage with diverse perspectives on what constitutes social order and deviant behaviour and consider the complexities of social control mechanisms, the stigmatisation of marginalised groups, and the dynamics of power in shaping perceptions of deviance. By fostering a deep understanding of the intricacies of social order and deviance, this module empowers you to challenge prevailing narratives and envision more equitable and inclusive societies.

Society, People and Place: Global Issues and Local Realities
This module explores the theories and methods used by sociologists for analysing culture and society. You will learn how global and local processes interact through a consideration of North Staffordshire, which becomes the backdrop for thinking about contemporary social concerns such as the housing crisis, generational conflict, and the effects of deindustrialisation. Beyond examining local expressions of wider global problems, we also speak to people working in frontline community organisations to learn how culture and community can deliver ethical change.

Power, Identity and Resistance
Exploring the ways in which individuals interact with others to shape meaning about identities, the purpose of this module is to understand power in social relations. You will learn how to identify the relationship between institutions, groups and individuals in forming knowledge and regulating behaviour. Crucially, we consider resistance to dominant forms of meaning through an examination of deviance and subculture, culminating with a reflection of the construction of self in digital societies.

Becoming a Social Scientist
This module transitions you to university scholarship and introduces the employability and professional skills that a social science degree provides through a range of action-focused activities. You will learn vital academic and professional skills and competencies that will allow you to thrive in the first year of your undergraduate studies and throughout your degree.  

Compulsory modules

Social Science Research Methods and Data Analysis
This module introduces you to the core social science of designing, implementing, and analysing social phenomenon. You will learn to identify and analyse data sources that might be used by social scientists in real world situations. From quantitative surveys to qualitative interviews and ethnographic studies, you will explore a diverse range of methodological approaches to understanding society and develop practical researcher skills that prepare you to carry out a significant piece of original research in your final year.

Redefining Social Theory: Digital and Global Perspectives
How can we mobilise our sociological imagination to understand the complexities and challenges of the modern world and our place within it? This module rethinks classic sociological theories for the global digital world, considering poststructural, intersectional and non-Western perspectives. You will gain a critical appreciation of how competing sociologies have emerged as our understanding of positionality and difference has developed, and look to the ways in which the sociological project has been stretched to incorporate debates about our non-human world.

Optional modules

Crime Across Borders
This module introduces cross-border crime and the impacts of globalisation and technological innovation on crime and criminal justice. You will learn how cross-border flows impact upon transnational crimes such as: drug use and distribution; human trafficking; immigration crimes; terrorism; cybercrime; hate crime; state crime; organised crime; and environmental crime. You will explore theories of globalisation, risk and network societies, and delve deeper into perspectives that decentre the nation-state, such as post- and de-colonial criminology, green criminology and queer criminology.

Challenges and Issues in Criminal Justice
This module examines current and emerging challenges and issues in criminal justice policy, process and practice. We will examine contemporary case studies of issues requiring a criminal justice response to prevent, deter or reduce problematic impacts and explore the ways in which we can contextualise, measure and respond to these challenges and issues. The module will include visits from practitioners working in criminal justice to provide the opportunity to network and gain insights into potential future employment.

Prisons, Punishment, Probation
What is it like to live in or work in prison? Why do many people return to prison repeatedly? Are prisons doing more harm than good? This module explores the continuum of custodial sentences, from the time a person may spend in prison, to their release into supervision in the community and transition to life ‘on the outside’. The module is underpinned by theories of punishment, rehabilitation and integration; in/equality and intersectionality; penal reformist perspectives, abolition and alternatives to custody.

Family, Community and Personal Life
How do we express love, friendship, and community in increasingly diverse social and cultural contexts? Have changes to work and gender roles altered the way we think about the division of labour? This module explores these questions and more against theories and debates about the transformations to personal life. Considering a broad range of examples from love in a digital age to the role of community in health and wellbeing, you will develop skills in analysing what ‘family’ means today and consider its role in shaping individuals and societies.

Difference and Division: Race, Class and Belief
In this module we explore how socio-cultural narratives and practices around the intersections of race, class and belief influence notions of selfhood, belonging, and social cohesion. You will investigate the role of ritual in shaping individual and collective identities and explore faith, spirituality and the occult in diverse historical and cultural contexts. You will develop critical skills to understand these debates through an analysis of the influence of multiculturalism, secularism and counter and sub-cultures in challenging mainstream beliefs and prejudices.

Social Design
Social Design is an interdisciplinary module exploring the interplay between societal structures, human behaviour, and crime, that equips you with the knowledge and skills to critically analyse, design, and implement interventions that foster safer and more inclusive communities. You will explore how social factors influence crime patterns and the efficacy of preventive measures. Depending on your subject interest you may explore the role of social policies in shaping community dynamics or design principles for crime prevention strategies, as a means to address complex social challenges.

Social Science at Work
This module introduces you to possible careers for social scientists and links to the work you are doing in your subject core and option modules asking the question ‘how can we mobilise academic study into the real world?’ You will also be encouraged to prepare for placement work that you may pursue, alongside reflecting on your social media footprint; developing your personal/professional brand and digital networking platforms.

Work Placement for Social Sciences
This module gives students studying subjects in the School of Social Sciences the opportunity to contribute to the world beyond the University, in any workplace where the specialist knowledge, research, analytical, and communication skills developed as part of your Social Science degree can be used and can make a difference. The chosen workplace or volunteering opportunity may be, for example, with a local government agency or third sector organisation, a charity, a community group, a criminal justice agency, a campaign group, a public service, a school or education provider, or another suitable opportunity identified by the student and approved by the module leader.

Optional modules

Dissertation/Independent Study Project in Criminology
The dissertation module provides you with the opportunity to undertake independent study on a criminological subject of your choice. Where appropriate, you will be encouraged to design your dissertation in response to regional/localised issues or invited to work alongside staff on professional research projects to inform your dissertation. The module encourages you to develop expertise and specialisms culminating in a coherent and rigorous written dissertation of around 8,000 words. You can undertake empirical research or desk-based/library study as appropriate.

Policing in the 21st Century
The module will explore changes, challenges and opportunities in 21st century policing relating to topics such as decision making, public protection, response policing, roads policing, vulnerability and risk, domestic abuse, counter terrorism, community policing, policing and the digital and police investigation. The module will include visits from practitioners working in policing or related fields and is particularly useful if you are considering a career in policing through the Degree Holder Entry Programme (DHEP).

Crime Prevention, Partnerships and Community Safety
This module explores the issue of crime prevention and reduction through the lens of multi-agency partnership working involving a range of partner agencies from across criminal justice, local government, the public sector and beyond. It explores the shift from the rhetoric of 'crime prevention' to 'community safety' in the aftermath of the Morgan Report (1991) and in the context of the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act and subsequent legislation focussing on community safety, anti-social behaviour and localised crime reduction initiatives.

Harm, Justice and Power
What, and who, is criminology for? Criminology has long debated whether it should support governments, or whether it should seek to challenge unequal power relations and systemic injustices within contemporary societies. A variety of perspectives on justice and power have emerged, including the idea that criminology's focus should not simply be on crime but on social harm. This module explores examples such as ‘crimes of the powerful’, state crime, corporate crimes, environmental harms; harms associated with capitalism, neoliberalism, and austerity.

Crime: From the Everyday to the Extremes
This module explores how the extreme and the everyday intermingle. It looks on the one hand, at extreme perspectives, groups, and actions, and on the other hand, discusses a range of everyday experiences of citizen involvement in processes of legal and extra-legal crime control and punishment. It explores how extremism connects to everyday experiences of crime and policing. Themes include gender-based violence; religious and political terrorism; immigration and anti-immigration activism; prejudice; hate crime; vigilantism, surveillance and the criminalisation of participation.

Independent Study Project in Sociology
The Independent Study Project, or dissertation, is the culmination of your sociological journey. You will work with a supervisor to design and produce an original sociological study on a topic of your choice. The dissertation allows you to apply your theoretical and methodological understandings of sociology to a research problem in either sociological literature or the social field. You can also choose to collaborate with an external organisation, conducting research that provides valuable insights to benefit their work.

Social Futures
What is society in a world governed by data and algorithms? How do we adapt to and influence social change? In this module, you will analyse how societies respond to and resist transformations wrought by the technological revolution. Considering a series of case studies relating to the big social challenges of our time, from the spread of misinformation and rise of conspiratorial thinking to the human response to climate change, you will apply your knowledge of sociology to provide a roadmap for navigating the changing world and suggest optimistic alternatives for the future.

Gender, Sexuality and Power
This module explores the cultural construction of gender and sexuality norms. Through diverse case studies, we deconstruct how femininities, masculinities, and sexualities are shaped by societal expectations and power dynamics. You will analyse how gender and sexuality intersect with other systems of privilege and oppression, such as race, ethnicity, class, and age. Additionally, we will explore debates surrounding beauty standards, including the impacts of multimedia and emerging technologies on gendered embodiment.  

Home and Belonging in a Precarious World
What does home mean to you? What does it mean to belong or not belong somewhere? This module explores our relationship to the notion of home. We consider how emotions shape our connections to place and space, influencing feelings of belonging and exclusion amidst the backdrop of border control, debt, the housing crisis, and displacement. You will critically investigate the dynamics of migration within the context of international conflict and climate crisis, analysing how movement across borders redefine notions of home and community.

Beyond Human
Beyond Human explores social behaviour, structures, and interactions among non-human entities, such as animals, artificial intelligence, and other forms of non-human life, seeking to understand the social dynamics present in non-human societies and their interactions with human societies. From examining the ethics of Artificial Intelligence to exploring the implications of environmental degradation on crime patterns, you will critically explore the complexities of human and non-human interconnectedness in shaping societies.

Engaged Social Science
Moving on from the previous skills modules, you will further consider how your degree can link to a range of life skills and careers through engagement with community groups, activists and people working in public and private sectors. You will be supported in your next steps either through transition to the workplace or postgraduate study.

Work Placement for Social Sciences Final Year Students
This module is designed to give students studying subjects in the School of Social Sciences the opportunity to contribute to the world beyond the University, in any workplace where the specialist knowledge, research, analytical, and communication skills developed as part of your Social Science degree can be used and can make a difference. The chosen workplace or volunteering opportunity may be, for example, with a local government agency or third sector organisation, a charity, a community group, a criminal justice agency, a campaign group, a public service, a school or education provider, or another suitable opportunity identified by the student and approved by the module leader.