Cultural and Media Studies BA

Course overview

You’ll explore cultural and media productions, practices and institutions in national, transnational and global contexts and across subject areas including philosophy, literature, sociology, art history, film, communication studies and digital humanities.

With a great choice of modules, you’ll gain a wide breadth of knowledge and be able to tailor your studies to focus on areas that interest you the most. You’ll examine issues such as conflict and its cultural mediation, migration and multicultural societies as well as utopian thinking and social activism in offline and online spaces. You’ll study difference across the globe, including race, class, gender, disability, the dialogue of analogue and digital technologies with our minds, bodies, ecologies, and other life forms, alongside the social effects of global communication networks.

The course is taught jointly by two distinctive departments (the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies and the School of Media and Communication), who combine innovative approaches to studying, making, and displaying culture and the arts with critical examinations of how people share knowledge, values and beliefs through television, journalism, film, online media and beyond. Alongside academic staff, you may also be taught by industry professionals with years of experience, as well as trained postgraduate researchers, connecting you to some of the brightest minds on campus.

You’ll become a critical and agile evaluator of cultural materials and mediated practices across diverse contexts, thereby allowing you to become global citizens who actively engage with contemporary societal challenges.

Additional highlights

Innovative research centres, projects and initiatives based out of the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies as well as the School of Media and Communication offer dynamic sites of engagement. A few notable highlights include:

• Centre for Critical Materialist Studies

• Centre for Cultural Studies (The internationally renowned journal parallax is edited from the Centre.)

• Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History (CentreCATH)

• Media Industries and Cultural Production

• MUSICSTREAM: Music Culture in the Age of Streaming

• Media Futures

The University campus also features wide range of museums, archives, and galleries:

• The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery

• Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery

• Museum of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine

• Marks & Spencer Company Archive

• International Textile Collection

Specialist facilities

The University Library offers online books, journals and databases, has a wealth of archive material in its Special Collections, including manuscript, archive and early printed material, and provides a range of spaces for individual study or group work. You’ll also benefit from access to Box of Broadcasts, an archive of over 2 million TV and radio broadcasts.

You can join various media production societies on campus and learn to use production/post-production equipment, software and facilities.

Over 16,000 courses are also available to you through LinkedIn Learning to complement your academic and professional portfolio.

Course details

On this course, you’ll develop concepts, competencies and knowledge that allow a nuanced understanding of how cultural and mediated artifacts circulate in contemporary society and across diverse global contexts. You’ll understand how people and social groups make meaning in everyday life through events, objects and language in physical, as well as web-based and computational, cultures.

You’ll take compulsory modules that provide you with a fundamental level of course-based knowledge and key, transferable skills such as researching, writing and communication. You’ll be able to develop these foundational skills, deepen knowledge in areas of interest and explore new topics through a range of optional modules. You’ll finish the course by completing a final written dissertation or a capstone project.

Year 1

You gain fundamental research, reading and writing skills for analysing and interpreting cultural and media objects and practices. Compulsory modules introduce essential theories and critical approaches and examine some of the significant factors that have shaped modernity and the contemporary world, such as:

• Industrialisation, Revolution and Globalisation

• War and Colonisation

• Cultural and political movements

• Networks, Algorithms, and Artificial Intelligence

You’ll have a diverse choice of optional modules that allow you to study a variety of exciting topics.

Year 2

You’ll deepen your understanding of key theoretical concepts in the study of culture, media and society. You also engage with methods and central questions in communications, broadcasting, journalism and digital media studies. Optional modules give you the chance to focus on topics that interest you including:

• Visual culture in Asia

• Cinema and culture

• The politics of utopia

• Gender and Issues of the (augmented) body

• Semiotics

• Power and social justice

• Journalism

• Employability and career preparation

Year 3
Optional: Study Abroad

Due to the course's interdisciplinary nature, you can apply for a place at a wide variety of international partner institutions. You’ll choose this option when in your second year, allowing you time to prepare with individual support and access to resources.

Studying abroad will extend your degree to four years. Find out more at the Study Abroad website.

Optional: Year in Industry

You have the option to apply for a work placement year with companies and organisations across the public, private and voluntary sectors in the UK and overseas. This is a great way to gain valuable workplace and industry experience before you graduate. Choosing a Year in Industry will extend your degree to four years.

Final year

During your last year of study, you’ll apply your analytical and critical skills to an independent final assignment which can be a researched written dissertation or a capstone project, which would be substantive research-based audio, visual and/or multimodal artifact on a topic area of your choosing. You can view a selection of previous dissertation titles here.

You complement and support this final project with one optional core and further optional modules. These may cover but are not limited to:

• Cultural and postcolonial theory

• Sexual difference, Feminisms, and Masculinities

• Posthumanism

• Representation of migration and diaspora

• Documentary

• Audience studies

• Politics and Cultures of Energy

The list shown below represents typical modules/components studied and may change from time to time. Read more in our terms and conditions.

Most courses consist of compulsory and optional modules. There may be some optional modules omitted below. This is because they are currently being refreshed to make sure students have the best possible experience. Before you enter each year, full details of all modules for that year will be provided.

For more information and a list of typical modules available on this course, please read Cultural and Media Studies BA in the course catalogue.

Year 1
Compulsory modules

Introduction to Cultural Analysis 1 (20 credits) - This module introduces ways of reading different aspects of culture. It should enable you to discuss the full range of cultural forms including film, television, popular literature and music as well as more canonical modes of culture such as opera, philosophy, art and architecture. This module will equip you with the skills to appreciate, criticise, and understand culture through intellectual approaches. This module covers questions of cultural studies, representation, authorship, meaning, close reading, ideology, race, sexual difference and psychoanalysis.

Networks, Environments and Cultures (20 credits) - This is a module that locates the interconnectedness of networks, its environments, and cultures as an analytic for understanding the contemporary world. You’ll address questions around identity formation, knowledge production and cultural institutions in the networked age, by analysing the social, political and aesthetic implications of user-driven and algorithmically mediated networks. We’ll provide emphasis to the historical trajectory that leads to the emergence of the world wide web, internet cultures, and current new media platforms. You’ll be encouraged to explore the role of networks in amplifying/mitigating divide(s)—both analogue and digital—as well as the role of networks in shaping our cultural consciousness and memory.

Introduction to Cultural Analysis 2 (20 credits) - This module introduces you to different methodological and critical approaches to the analysis and study of cultural production and consumption, in a range of different social, historical and political contexts. Week by week you are taken through a range of relevant questions, topics and themes relating to the critical and contextual analysis of culture and are shown the ways in which culture itself informs how it is theoretically interpreted.

Studying Media (20 credits) -You’ll be introduced to a range of media and communication approaches, drawing on scholarship in media industries, texts, audience and histories. You’ll also examine critical perspectives on and debates regarding the production, circulation, and reception of media. This module will also guide you in developing independent research skills and critical analysis.

Optional modules

Cultural History (20 credits) - You’ll be introduced to some social and cultural formations underscoring the history of ‘the West’ since the period known as the Enlightenment. It invites you to engage with history from a cultural perspective, develop a 'sense of history' and reflect on what might be understood as ‘historical consciousness’. We draw on historical events, developments and concepts to interrogate some of the ideological and political assumptions informing modernity and postmodernity. Using a wide variety of materials, you’ll also consider how race, ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality have been figured and represented since the Enlightenment.

The History of Communication (20 credits) - You’ll study the main themes in the history of communication from a broad perspective. It has been designed to provide not only the story of communication and media, but also the context in which systems of communication were developed and used.

Introduction to Media and Communication Theory (20 credits) - This module examines some of the main theoretical perspectives and arguments that underpin the study of media and communication. It considers the ways in which these perspectives are linked, why they continue to hold relevance for contemporary media scholars and how they help us to understand the role of mediated communication in society.

Year 2
Compulsory modules

Keywords (20 credits) - Representation, Form, Context, Interpretation and Power are words you’ll hear often while undertaking your course. They are heard frequently because they are concepts used by teachers and scholars in these fields to analyse works of art and cultural practices whether realised as paintings, texts, buildings, actions or otherwise. What do these concepts mean; how are they used; when and why were they produced; what debates have they stirred? These are the questions that you’ll engage in this module. Through reading, writing and speaking you’ll become active and self-aware participants in the cultural history of the present.

Visual Communication (20 credits) - This module is designed to develop your visual literacy and enable you to read key visual texts, deploying a range of historical, critical and contextual approaches. You’ll look at dominant visual cultural forms such as photography, cinema, television and websites, developing the ways in which you try to understand these key modes of communication.

OR

Digital Cultures (20 credits) - You’ll explore the interactive leisure forms and practices of digital technologies such as gaming, modding, play, hacktivism and social media. We ask how seriously we should take these new forms of interactions, and the extent to which they are changing our understanding of culture today. You’ll explore a number of digital cultures and practices and consider a range of themes and issues that relate to them. We also address the contexts of these cultures, in order to develop your understanding of the political, economic, social and technical implications of what might seem like harmless and benign leisure activities.

Cinema and Culture (20 credits) - You’ll comparatively examine specific films and their remake(s). This approach enables us to note cultural, social and technological shifts over time, to discuss the possibilities and challenges of transnational remakes and to consider wider questions of inter-, para- and metatextuality in 20th century cinema and our postcinematic age. You’ll engage with relevant discourses and make detailed analyses of screenings, readings and terminologies. The module also dedicates time to develop your writing and presentation skills. Techniques and strategies of how to construct a focused argument, find appropriate literature and read a film closely will be explicitly addressed and practiced in this module.

Image, Music, Text: Reading Roland Barthes (20 credits) - This module offers a detailed encounter with the work of Roland Barthes, and provides, more generally, an introduction to structural linguistics, critical semiology and its poststructuralist afterlife. Taking its cue from Barthes’ extreme attentiveness to language in the broadest sense of the word, the module explores important philosophical questions of thought, meaning, art, culture and human relations. The module follows the arc of Barthes’ work, from the rigour of his structuralist phase, with its eye-opening revolutionary insights into the structure of language and cultural systems, to his more personal and open-ended later writing, which both extends and critiques the strictly semiological approaches.

Seeing in Asia (20 credits) - Are there fundamental differences between the ways you see familiar objects and those from Asia? Are there ways in which the power and meanings of 'seeing' change in an Asian context, so that even though we are 'seeing' the same object, we understand the object differently? How do cultural and historical values and standards shape the act of seeing and how we interpret images? By engaging with wide-ranging historical and cultural examples drawn from a range of specialities from art to science, this module addresses the age-old problem of ‘nature’ versus ‘nurture’ through the perspective of Asian Culture.

The State of Utopia (20 credits) - This module offers you the opportunity to explore a multitude of different ideal cities and model communities from the sixteenth century to the present day. The tracing of the various forms utopianism has adopted since Thomas More will take us into the fields of architecture, art, literature, politics, philosophy, sociology, women's studies and religion. In parallel to this historical approach to utopian thinking, you’ll be encouraged to think critically and imaginatively about our contemporary society and to propose a theoretically informed utopia for the future. The study of dystopias (failed social experiments) will be an unavoidable component of this module.

Live Issues and Contemporary Art Practice (20 credits) - You’ll consider how cultural theory and contemporary aesthetic practice critically engage with current social and political issues. Focussing on two “live issues” for five weeks, you’ll be encouraged to focus on subjects that incisively bear on what it might mean to be alive in the 21st century. Both issues will be framed with an appropriate theoretical framework that introduces you to the complexity of the topics being addressed. The “issues” focussed on will vary so to reflect recent works and current exhibitions.

Bodies of Difference: Gender, Power and the Visual Arts (20 credits) - This module explores a range of feminist, postcolonial and queer theories of the embodiment of gender, its performance, performativity and representation in art and visual culture, showing the relations between the two. You’ll address shifts in the representational schema of the woman's body by the study of a range of feminist perspectives that offer a critical framework for thinking about the body, embodiment and difference in all its intersectional complexity. This module also covers a range of theories and concepts that are vital to our understanding of the power and dynamics of gender and the body that are operative in art history and visual culture. It is in this sense that we will move toward the recent critical feminist theories and art practices that have revisited and challenged the conventions and representations that encoded ‘woman’ as the image of desire.

Encountering Contemporary Art in a Global Context (20 credits) - You’ll investigate a conundrum that presents itself in the contemporary art world: on the one hand, it is defined by the spread of international art exhibitions and experimental local initiatives in which globetrotting artists encounter audiences. On the other, it continues to reproduce uneven power relations, maintaining old geographical hierarchies and a one-way flow of artists from the peripheries to ‘the centre’. Also, in its participation within global capitalism, the radical potential of contemporary art often seems to be neutralised by the exhibition form. What then, is the role of the curator in this complex situation? How might we understand contemporary art curating as a critical and creative practice? What form can curatorial activity take beyond the exhibition? How can curating engage with and challenge the social inequalities and power dynamics of globalisation? You’ll use case studies and theory to consider these questions and reflect on your own ideas.

Issues in Journalism (20 credits) - This module explores the role and place of journalism in society. In so doing, it introduces you to the sociological analysis of journalism as a societal practice while examining key perspectives and theories that helps us understand its role. These theoretical approaches include functionalist, structuralism and Marxist analysis, as well ones such as gender. The aim is to offer you a holistic and comprehensive understanding of journalism in the context of society.

Media, Power and Social Justice (20 credits) - This module examines key topics and scholarly debates regarding media, power and social justice, adopting an approach founded in critical theories and perspectives. It offers a thorough examination of key contributions of the Frankfurt School, such as Adorno and Horkheimer’s ‘culture industry’ thesis and the work of Walter Benjamin, and considers alternative analytic frameworks that foreground social justice issues, such as intersectionality and the ‘capability approach’. Media examples from film, popular music, advertising, television, and/or digital media will be used to critically examine the power of media and roles they assume in culture and society, taking into consideration the implications for social justice.

Videogames: Identities in Play (20 credits) - Videogames engage and engross in a variety of ways. At the same time, they provide representations of different individuals and groups. But how? You’ll examine the forms of identity and identification that videogames have us adopt as we play them. What do games seek to persuade us regarding questions of species, ability, gender, labour, and our very sense of self? Who and what are we when we play videogames? No prior experience of playing or writing about videogames is required, but a willingness to do so, and to think about them carefully and critically, is essential.

Developing Your Professional Identity: Preparing for a Career in Within The Arts, Heritage and Creative Industries (20 credits) - Are you interested in a career in the Arts, Culture, Heritage or Creative Industries? This module helps you to develop yourself and prepare for each stage of the recruitment process. You’ll cover the following key areas: Identity – develop your self-awareness, being enterprising and how this relates to your course- Work place – understand how you fit within the workplace- Professional Image – how to articulate your professional image- Digital Literacy – develop confidence in expressing yourself digitally. There will be the opportunity to work with an external organisation to make a difference, create change and have a positive impact. This is a very practical and interactive module that is delivered by specialist career consultants and professionals, including Alumni who work in the sector. You’ll be assessed through coursework, undertaking a range of written and practical activities including a project with an organisation.

Students Into Schools (Arts Humanities and Culture) (20 credits) - Do you have an interest in teaching or education as a career? This module develops your skills and expertise in supporting young people in the classroom, while building on your understanding of key issues in current UK education. You’ll spend a minimum of 40 hours in a local school, contributing to the teaching and learning of your specialist subject. A series of seminars, delivered by a range of educational professionals, will help you to contextualise your placement experience and assist you in becoming a more effective classroom practitioner. You’ll gain greater self-awareness and confidence in your ability to communicate with a range of audiences, to take individual responsibility for the planning and management of your work and to appreciate how your subject knowledge can be applied in a school setting.

Year 3
Compulsory modules

Dissertation (40/60 Credits) - The final outcome of this module is a BA dissertation. The written dissertation should take the form of a coherently argued, thoroughly researched and carefully edited written work which is based on and clearly reflects the knowledge and skills acquired throughout the programme and the dissertation process.

Optional modules

Humanity, Animality and Globality (20 credits) - Crucial for thinking what and how “we” are and could become as a “humanity”, is the thinking of “our” difference and similarities with other life forms. This module therefore engages with theories and practices of animality so as to interrogate the category of The Human. A wide range of material- literary and philosophical texts, films, paintings and installation projects- will be considered that reflect how our notion of “species” is subject to ongoing change.

Deconstruction Reading Politics (20 credits) - This module proposes an introduction to deconstruction through a close analysis of a series of texts by Derrida. A double interpretative focus is maintained: on the meticulous analysis of these texts and on deconstruction as a way of reading (culture, politics). You’ll start with a general discussion of the origins of deconstruction, both in Derrida's biography and in the history of Western thought. We describe several key deconstructive insights with examples taken from some (relatively) simple texts by Derrida. This module then offers a survey of Derrida's work, moving between his more explicitly political or meta-political work, his more abstract, speculative or poetic work, his extended textual analyses and his interviews. At the same time, this module is attentive to the way in which deconstruction also submits these divisions to a radical interrogation. The readings are taken from a range of Derrida's publications in English translation with occasional reference to the French originals. These are contextualised philosophically, historically and politically.

From Trauma to Cultural Memory: The Unfinished Business of Representation and the Holocaust (20 credits) - This module addresses debates in literary, historiographical and psychological theory about the ways in which witnesses provide testimony, and the ways in which the legacy of a historical trauma of the magnitude of the Holocaust is represented by historians, sociologists, writers, artists and museums. Rather than an historical study of the events of 1933-45, you’ll consider the continuing significance of this disaster in the larger context of European history. You’ll pay close attention to the voices and images of those who continue to live with a trauma that only psychological, analytical, creative work can turn into memory, which the cultures of Europe must take on as the history that continues to shape our present responses to all forms of racism, genocide and violence against the stranger.

Movies, Migrants and Diasporas (20 credits) - This module is dedicated to migration and diaspora in Europe as reflected in the cinema. It introduces you to the work of filmmakers with, for example, German Turkish, Black or Asian British, Maghrebi French, Roma or Jewish backgrounds, productions made by transnational Eastern European practitioners and films about migration and diaspora created by non-migrant/diasporic writers and directors.

Reading Sexual Difference (20 credits) - This is a module in reading, as if sexual difference were some 'thing' that could only be read, actively interpreted, and never simply observed from a neutral, transcendental, scientific viewpoint. As if we've always already been in it, inescapably, not knowing whether it's one of our attributes or vice versa. So we'll try to crane our head out the window and get some kind of an angle on the question. Of course we will be interested in what philosophers have to say (or not) about it, and indeed sexual difference can be seen as underpinning or grounding all philosophical discourse. However, as such, it must also constitute a challenge to the very foundations or possibility of philosophy itself: maybe it's precisely what philosophy, or science, can't quite comprehend...? The passage from seeing to reading will thus be a passage beyond theory. Not that science or philosophy is necessarily for boys and poetry for girls. And yet our 'literary' penchant is anything but neutral: we would like our study to itself be inscribed in and with sexual difference. We will spend most of our time reading in detail (along with) some of the important thinker-writers on the topic.

Critical approaches to photography (20 credits) - Photographic images saturate every corner of contemporary society in a developed country to such an extent that it is difficult to spend a day without seeing a photographic image. Yet, the popular concepts in discussions of photography remain overused and unexamined at best ('truth' 'reflection' 'index'). By engaging with historical and cultural treatises about the medium and its property (how photography 'reflects' reality, how photographers 'see' differently, for instance) this module excavates the multiple layers of philosophical issues embedded in concepts such as 'truth,' 'reality' and 'mediation' in thinking and writing about photographic images.

Postcolonial Feminisms (20 credits) - You’ll examine feminist theory and politics, as they have developed in the context of the period of decolonization and its wake. Emphasis will fall on theoretical formulations concerning sexual difference and the social division of gender as these have been produced by women writing to or from former European colonies. Attention will also be given to questions posed by and for feminism within postcolonial metropoles.

The Documentary and Reality (20 credits) - You’ll gain an understanding of the development of documentary forms and functions and the character of the debates about 'truth' which have surrounded documentary work since the 1920s. More specifically, you’ll have knowledge of, and analytic competence regarding major stages in the development of documentary practice; criteria used in the evaluation of documentary both by academics and by the public; key visual and verbal components of documentary organisation; narrative and observational structures in documentary; and current tendencies and new technology.

Feminism, Identity and Media (20 credits) - You’ll be introduced to the main theoretical and critical arguments and approaches associated with feminist media studies, exploring both the history of the field as well as contemporary debates. Through ten one-hour lectures, you’ll cover the key media and communication areas and issues in relation to gender, including media, television, advertising, PR and music. Topics covered include the politics of representation; feminist theories of narrative and identity; the role of women in the media industries; and the relationship between feminism and new media.

Climate Communication (20 credits) - You’ll address themes and theory relevant to climate communication including conceptual and historical contexts, political and social dimensions of climate change and climate change denial, the relationship between media and climate change, environmental movements and campaigns, and science and risk communication. The following questions guide your learning in the module: What is climate communication? How do people communicate and think about climate change? How can messages about climate change and the environment be crafted to change people’s attitudes and behaviour? Why is climate communication important?

Understanding the Audience (20 credits) - The module introduces you to the main approaches in understanding the relationship between audiences/users and media. You’ll consider the development of the concept audience, exploring empirical research and theoretical arguments from a range of perspectives including how scholars have conceptualised the audience, how media industries view the audience, as well as, addressing contemporary debates about the usefulness of the category ‘audience’ in the contemporary media context.

Creative Work in the Cultural Industries (20 credits) - The cultural industries are those industries that produce culture, and so they naturally include media industries such as television, film, music, publishing. People often want to work in these industries because they offer the opportunity to be ‘creative’. But what does ‘creativity’ mean? To explore these questions, we reflect on changes in the nature of work itself in modern societies. For example, when so much modern work is temporary and precarious, and people in advanced industrial countries work longer hours than ever before, is there a danger that work is detracting from the quality of our lives rather than enhancing it? You’ll explore the pressures, but also the pleasures, of creative work in the media. We also look at the extent to which it is feasible to do ‘good work’ in the cultural industries, as they become seemingly ever more commercial and competitive. You’ll explore these debates by engaging with academic research and other writing, both historical and contemporary in nature.

Majority World Masculinities (20 Credits) - This module locates how the postcolonial nation state and masculine behaviours intersect in the Majority Worlds (also known as the Global South) through analysis of cultural artifacts related to current environments, health, family, relationships and aging. In-depth case studies and policy reports will help contextualise how the cultural construction of being a "man" in such spaces is coextensive with colonial and heteropatriarchal assumptions about masculinity, Further, the various gendered experiences of the male body based in citizenship, caste, class, occupation, physical ability and sexual orientation will allow you to understand and develop rational frameworks for the varied contexts of hegemonic, hyper and hypo-masculinities in diverse social and professional settings across local, regional and national contexts

Energy Cultures (20 Credits) - The relationship between energy, modernity and capitalist ecologies of development while apparent in our daily lived experiences is seldom analysed. This module locates energy as a key analytic of cultural analysis through understanding the positions of dominant and minority socio-political subjects who inhabit diverse energy landscapes. In analysing the political, public and private discourses around key energy issues that are found in cultural and media artifacts of the present, you’ll explore the role of energy cultures in shaping our futures and identify how the path to producing equitable climate change policies can start from making cultural analysis and research a key part of the conversation.

Learning and teaching

We use a range of in-person and digitally enhanced teaching and learning methods to help you benefit from the expertise of your instructors and make the most of your strengths and abilities. Delivery methods include lectures, seminars, screenings and (online) tutorials that emphasise inclusive, active learning and student inputs. Independent study is also crucial to the degree, allowing you to develop and practise essential critical and research skills and form your own ideas.

In addition to engaging with your module tutors, you receive one-to-one support from your academic personal tutor and, as a finalist, from your dissertation supervisor. You can attend extracurricular talks by industry professionals, visiting artists and academic speakers, as well as workshops, conferences and exhibitions both on and off-campus.

On this course, you’ll be taught by our expert academics, from lecturers through to professors. You may also be taught by industry professionals with years of experience, as well as trained postgraduate researchers, connecting you to some of the brightest minds on campus.

Assessment

We use a variety of assessment methods, allowing you to build different skills. Usually, these include essays, exams, tests and (group) presentations, as well as small-scale research projects and your dissertation. Assessment is led by principles of relevance, fairness and inclusivity, and the development of vital skills beyond university, such as problem-solving, adaptability, self-reliance and reflexivity

Depending on your module choices, you may also be asked to submit reflective logs, short answers, a portfolio, photography, a personal digital story or other forms of digitally curated content.

For each year of study, the University’s Skills@Library team offers training sessions and resources on topics such as exam technique, public speaking, literature search and academic writing.

Entry requirements

A-level: ABB

Alternative qualification

Read more about UK and Republic of Ireland accepted qualifications or contact the School’s Undergraduate Admissions Team.

Alternative entry

We’re committed to identifying the best possible applicants, regardless of personal circumstances or background.

Access to Leeds is a contextual admissions scheme which accepts applications from individuals who might be from low income households, in the first generation of their immediate family to apply to higher education, or have had their studies disrupted.

Find out more about Access to Leeds and contextual admissions.

Arts and Humanities with Foundation Year

This course is designed for students whose backgrounds mean they are less likely to attend university (also known as widening participation backgrounds) and who do not currently meet admissions criteria for direct entry to a degree.

The course will give you the opportunity to be taught by academic staff and provides intensive support to enable your development of academic skills and knowledge. On successful completion of your foundation year, you will progress to your chosen degree course. Find out more about the Arts and Humanities with Foundation Year

International

We accept a range of international equivalent qualifications. Contact the Undergraduate Admissions Office for more information.

International Foundation Year

International students who do not meet the academic requirements for undergraduate study may be able to study the University of Leeds International Foundation Year. This gives you the opportunity to study on campus, be taught by University of Leeds academics and progress onto a wide range of Leeds undergraduate courses. Find out more about International Foundation Year programmes.

English language requirements

IELTS 6.5 overall, with no less than 6.0 in any component. For other English qualifications, read English language equivalent qualifications.

Improve your English
If you're an international student and you don't meet the English language requirements for this programme, you may be able to study our undergraduate pre-sessional English course, to help improve your English language level.

Fees

UK: £9,250 (per year)

International: £24,500 (per year)

Tuition fees for UK undergraduate students starting in 2025/26
In November 2024 the UK Government announced that the tuition fee cap may rise to £9,535 from £9,250.

The tuition fee cap for some foundation years may also reduce to £5,760 from £9,250.

This would start from the academic year 2025/26. However, this is subject to final confirmation from the Government. Once available, we’ll publish the fees for the 2025/26 academic year and individual offer letters shall be updated via email and post.

The foundation year courses affected are:
·         Business Studies with Foundation Year BSc
·         Arts and Humanities with Foundation Year BA
·         Interdisciplinary Studies with Preparation for Higher Education BA
·         Social Science (foundation year) BA

Tuition fees for international undergraduate students starting in 2024/25 and 2025/26
Tuition fees for international students for 2024/25 and 2025/26 are available on individual course pages.

Tuition fees for UK undergraduate students starting in 2024/25
Tuition fees for UK full-time undergraduate students are set by the UK Government and will be £9,250 for students starting in 2024/25.

The fee may increase in future years of your course in line with inflation only, as a consequence of future changes in Government legislation and as permitted by law.
 

Tuition fees for a study abroad or work placement year
If you take a study abroad or work placement year, you’ll pay a reduced tuition fee during this period. For more information, see Study abroad and work placement tuition fees and loans.

Read more about paying fees and charges.

There may be additional costs related to your course or programme of study, or related to being a student at the University of Leeds. Read more on our living costs and budgeting page.

Scholarships and financial support

If you have the talent and drive, we want you to be able to study with us, whatever your financial circumstances. There is help for students in the form of loans and non-repayable grants from the University and from the government. Find out more in our Undergraduate funding overview.

Applying

Apply to this course through UCAS. Check the deadline for applications on the UCAS website.

Read our guidance about applying.

International students apply through UCAS in the same way as UK students. Our network of international representatives can help you with your application. If you’re unsure about the application process, contact the admissions team for help.

Read about visas, immigration and other information in International students. We recommend that international students apply as early as possible to ensure that they have time to apply for their visa.

Admissions policy

University of Leeds Admissions Policy 2025

This course is taught by

School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies

Contact us

School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies Undergraduate Admissions

Email: finadm@leeds.ac.uk
Telephone:

Career opportunities

This course equips you with essential skills in research, analysis, presentation and communication, as well as in critical audio-visual and cultural awareness.

All these qualities are valuable in diverse careers across a wide range of industries and roles such as the media, journalism, cultural and creative industries, education, politics, NGOs and the public sector.

A number of our graduates go on to postgraduate study at Leeds or another institution.

Graduate destinations on the job market include: positions in research, secondary and higher education, (digital) communication, PR and marketing roles in businesses, media, arts and cultural organisations, management and policy development in local government and the public/third sector more broadly. Among our graduates we also have radio presenters, curators, writers, singer-songwriters, solicitors and consultants.

The School is committed to helping you achieve your career ambitions. You work closely with staff in the School and careers advisers to source opportunities to gain experience, develop your skills and build networks. Our students are among the top 5 most targeted by top employers according to The Graduate Market 2022, High Fliers Research.

I'm interested in a career in media, similar to an internship I had writing for a magazine in London, which I got thanks to support from the School.

- Rose Mason, BA Cultural and Media Studies

Careers support

We encourage you to prepare for your career from day one. That’s one of the reasons Leeds graduates are so sought after by employers.

Leeds for Life is our unique approach to helping you make the most of University by supporting your academic and personal development. Find out more at the Leeds for Life website.

The Careers Centre and staff in your faculty provide a range of help and advice to help you plan your career and make well-informed decisions along the way, even after you graduate.

We encourage you to prepare for your career from day one. That’s one of the reasons Leeds graduates are so sought after by employers.

Leeds for Life is our unique approach to helping you make the most of University by supporting your academic and personal development. Find out more at the Leeds for Life website.

The Careers Centre and staff in your faculty provide a range of help and advice to help you plan your career and make well-informed decisions along the way, even after you graduate. Find out more about Careers support.

Study abroad and work placements

Study abroad

On this course you have the opportunity to apply to spend time abroad, usually as an extra academic year. We have over 300 University partners worldwide and popular destinations for our students include Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa and Latin America. 

Find out more at the Study Abroad website.

My year in industry has been absolutely invaluable. I feel so much so secure now, knowing that I will have a year of work experience under my belt, once I leave university.

- Madeleine Birks, BA Cultural and Media Studies

Work placements

Practical work experience can help you decide on your career and improve your employability. On this course you have the option to apply to take a placement year module with organisations across the public, private and voluntary sectors in the UK, or overseas.

Find out more about work experience on the Careers website.

Practical work experience can help you decide on your career and improve your employability. On this course you have the option to apply to take a placement year module with organisations across the public, private and voluntary sectors in the UK, or overseas.