Criminology BSc

Compulsory

• Introduction to Criminology

  A critical introduction to what is understood by ‘crime’ and ‘criminology’. This will involve thinking about the different social, legal, and cultural understandings of crime and social harm, as well as the origins and the history of the discipline of criminology.

• Case Studies in Criminology

  Students will explore a range of different case studies to enable you to understand the complexities of criminal behaviour, criminal justice responses, and their social and political contexts. Case studies will include high profile crimes and/or offenders, criminal investigation and prosecution, miscarriages of justice, protest and resistance, and high-profile investigations into the work/conduct of criminal justice agencies.

• Understanding Crime and Punishment

  In addition to providing an overview of traditional criminological theories about why and how crime occurs, the module also explores why and how we control and punish. The module will explore changing models of punishment, surveillance, and control. In doing so, the module will explore different forms of punishment, the rationales behind them, and how they may be experienced differently.

• Crime, Media and Society

  Students will be introduced to the critical role of the media in the criminalisation and marginalisation of some communities. Representations of crime and deviance will be considered through the prism of various forms of media such as television, social media, music, gaming, news, and the image.

• Institutions of the Criminal Justice System

  Students will develop an understanding of the structure and history of the main institutions of the criminal justice system. We will explore debates and controversies related to the CJS and to assess them in relation to their impact upon marginalised communities using a variety of lenses, including but not limited to ethnicity, race, gender, migration status, economic status, and class.

• Global London

  This module enables students to better understand their lived social environment, by focusing on the concept of ‘Global London' through multiple approaches derived from the Department of Social and Political Sciences. Topics include migration, security, urban development, crime, and the politics of public space.

Compulsory

• Global and Intersectional Criminology

  This module will enable students to use intersectional perspectives to develop their understandings of crime, deviance, victimisation, social harm, and justice in a global context. The module will explore contemporary criminological theories and debates, with a particular concern for those from the Global South and/or relating to wider global contexts.

• 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.

• Crime and Deviance in Society

  An introduction to notions of deviance in terms of othering, stigma, and criminalisation. It will consider the changing nature of deviance, how perceptions of deviance change over time, and how these perceptions impact on individuals and communities. Deviance will be studied through a number of different lenses that consider deviance as a part of a process of oppression but also a source of resistance.

Optional

• Youth Crime and Youth Justice

  This module will consider the history of youth crime and youth justice. It will furnish students with a sociological and criminological understanding of contemporary issues relating to youth crime, providing both a practical and critical understanding of young people's involvement in crime and deviance and the various responses to youth crime by the criminal justice system.

• Gangs, Street Culture and Crime

  Students will be introduced to the history and the various theoretical debates surrounding the nature of street gangs and street cultural formation. Using a wide range of criminological and empirical research, the causes of gangs and street culture, and the responses to this global phenomenon will be considered.

• Mental Health and Offending

  An introduction to the key theoretical perspectives surrounding mental health and offending, it ensures students are familiar with the key legislation, policy, and practice in this area. This will enable students to critically question the relationship between mental health and offending, and support them to critically evaluate the key debates and controversies in the field.

• Victims: Crime, Social Harm and Justice

  The module will introduce students to criminal justice policies and practices that relate to victims and enable them to think critically about who we consider to be a victim. Students will also be introduced to the field of victimology and explore the how victims are characterised, their experiences of the criminal justice system, and broader societal responses to victimisation.

• Colonialism, Migration and Global Racism

  This module explores the concept, meaning and practices of ‘race’, ethnicity, racialization, and global racisms. It identifies how ‘race’ and racism have evolved over time, and in different contexts - both nationally in the contemporary UK as well as in other parts of the world. 

• Global Communication

  Examine the ways in which the globalisation of communication has transformed social, political, and economic relations. The following themes will be addressed in this module: the state, economy, power, globalisation, nationalism, identity, digitisation, culture and consumerism, media markets, public relations and politics, and political economy of communication.

• Making the Social

  An introduction to core concepts in social theory. The emphasis is on concepts through which students can relate to the worlds they inhabit and the lives they live, connecting these to a broad canvas: the diversity of social existence and the sweep of human history. The focus is on basic building blocks of social existence.

• National Security Intelligence

  This module furnishes students with an overview to the field of national security intelligence. It also examines in greater detail intelligence collection, analysis, counterintelligence, covert action, and other selected topics.

• Themes in Psychological and Psychiatric Anthropology

  Learn about the development of psychological and psychiatric anthropology including theories of emotion, psychoanalytic approaches, folk psychologies, culture and personality, mental health and cultural perspectives on 'madness'.

• Digital Culture

  This module considers the shape of new media technologies such as iPhones – it explores how new developments in media technology have 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.

• War and Humanitarianism

  This module aims to provide students with a critical understanding of the main themes in the anthropology of war and humanitarian assistance. These include the anthropology of violence, how societies respond in the aftermath of violence, the origins of humanitarianism, the concept of emergency, refugees and Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘bare life’.

Compulsory

• Criminology Dissertation

  An independent piece of research, which may be empirical, policy-based, or theoretical. Students will be allocated a supervisor and also provided with a series of workshops and drop-in sessions to help support the independent and specialised study.

• Criminology in Practice

  Develop wider employability skills and understanding of professional practice related to a degree in criminology. Students will also be introduced to a number of areas of employment related to criminal justice practice to encourage them to think about their future career pathways and professional development.

Optional

• Drugs, Crime and Criminal Justice

  Examine historical and current debates concerning the criminalisation of a variety of drugs. This will introduce students to debates about the impact of the criminalisation of drugs on marginalised communities. Students will be introduced to debates about global drug markets and the changing nature of those markets over time.

• Capitalism and Sex

  This module will examine the relationship between capitalism and sex through a number of theoretical lenses which explore how sex intersects with the generation of profit. Using both historical and post-modern examples students will be encouraged to engage critically with debates around traditional and postmodern forms of sex work and the impacts of feminism on those debates.

• Psychosocial Perspectives on Crime and Violence

  An interdisciplinary module which explores the psychosocial underpinnings of crime and violence in the contemporary world. It offers students the opportunity to move beyond common sense understandings of crime and criminal justice to consider the interconnected psychic, social and cultural processes involved in the development of criminal social identities.

• Home, Housing and Social Harm

  This module introduces students to a number of questions concerning notions of home and housing in contemporary society, and how sociologists and criminologists should confront these issues as they occupy a central place in political, public, and mediated debates. It explores sociological and criminological debates around housing and the home, looking at the relationship between self, society, and state.

• Criminal Law in Context

  Equipping students with a critical understanding of the socio-legal context of key aspects of the criminal law in England and Wales. These include violent and sexual offences, homicide, drugs and healthcare choices, public safety, property and security and disorder. 

• Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism

  This module aims to address a series of empirical questions regarding the causes, conduct, and consequences of campaigns of terrorism in the modern world. It provides students with an understanding of a series of key debates in the social science literature.

• Long Walk to Freedom: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid in South Africa

  Encouraging students to consider the extent to which the current situation in South Africa is a product of the colonial era, postcolonial circumstance, or Africa’s deeper past. It will familiarise students with the main developments in Africanist and South Africanist historiography and encourage students to study South African history from both an Afro-centric and European perspective.

• Cities, Power and Social Change

  An introduction to urban sociology and will develop the students understanding of urban development, cultures, and representation. The course will offer theoretical tools and provide practical applications for the relationship between space, culture, and social life in contemporary cities.

• Lawyers, Guns and Money: Making the Modern World-System

  This module will 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.

• Apocalypse! Crisis and Society

  Explore the social & political significance of representations of national and global crises, and public perceptions of controversies. Students analyse dystopian popular and scientific discourses that dwell on disorder and catastrophe. Indicative content includes risk, uncertainty, globalisation, the environment, disease, capitalism. Public understanding, perception and engagement with popular and scientific controversies and notions of crisis.

• 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.

• Themes in Psychological and Psychiatric Anthropology

  Learn about the development of psychological and psychiatric anthropology including theories of emotion, psychoanalytic approaches, folk psychologies, culture and personality, mental health and cultural perspectives on 'madness'.

• Environmental Justice

  The module introduces students to diverse notions and theories of social justice, and to the emergence and development of environmental justice movements. It enables students to explore how environmental justice claims are made in relation to substantive issues at different scales of analysis.

• War and Humanitarianism

  This module aims to provide students with a critical understanding of the main themes in the anthropology of war and humanitarian assistance. These include the anthropology of violence, how societies respond in the aftermath of violence, the origins of humanitarianism, the concept of emergency, refugees and Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘bare life’.