BA (Hons) Criminology and Sociology with Foundation Year

This module provides you with the integrated skills required for academic success. You will develop your skills of creating posters, constructing bibliographies, and sourcing relevant materials. Alongside this you will learn to identify and understand academic writing and referencing techniques. The multi-disciplinary syllabus and assessment tasks will enable you to acquire the academic skills needed for successful transition into Level 4 and the completion of the degree.

This module provides you with the necessary skills to develop a research project on the Liverpool City region from your particular subject perspective. You will explain academic research methods, write a coherent piece of academic work based on an understanding of Liverpool, and locate relevant research to support your project. The module will help you to develop an independent approach to learning. 

This module will provide you with the opportunity to understand contemporary issues in the field of law.

This module introduces you to relevant and contemporary issues in society. You will learn to identify key social issues in the UK, to demonstrate an understanding of key concepts relating to inequality, to demonstrate the ability to locate and provide academic evidence relevant to understanding social issues, and to describe the impact of key thinkers in understanding contemporary social issues.

This module provides you with the opportunity to understand contemporary issues in security and policing. You will learn to identify contemporary themes in security and policing and how theory can help explain crime. Through your study you will understand the challenges to mainstream security and policing and develop the ability to express key ideas about security and policing in written form.

This module provides you with the opportunity to understand contemporary issues in Criminal Justice. It gives you a foundation-level knowledge of how Criminal Justice works in 21st-century England and Wales.

This module enables you to examine contemporary social and environmental issues of prominence and it will demonstrate the contribution of different sociological approaches to your understanding. It will become apparent that a key strength of sociology is its diverse and challenging interpretations of social and green issues.

This module introduces students to the discipline of sociology, covering both classic and contemporary research as applied to issues of contemporary debate.

After completing the module the student should be able to:

• Reach informed judgements about the value of classic and contemporary approaches to sociology.
• Use their sociological imaginations to consider contemporary issues.
• Draw on the basic skills required for effective study and learning.

After completing the module you should be able to:

• Identify and reflect upon the following aspects of self-awareness in respect of personal development and career planning: strengths and weaknesses, motivations and values, ability to work with others.
• Design a qualitative research design.
• Collect and present qualitative data.
• Reflect on their experience of designing a qualitative research project.
• Reflect on their experience of collecting and presenting qualitative data.

This module will look at some contemporary criminological issues within society (some of which are generally ignored by state institutions as well as by much of criminology itself). We will apply our criminological theoretical imagination to help us understand and theorise them. Adopting a critical lens and simultaneously considering social divisions allows us to explore these issues differently to the ways in which, for example, state institutions may define, understand and seek to tackle them.

In this module you will develop a range of essential qualitative research skills to undertake and reflect upon problem solving research within a supportive environment. The module builds on the EBL in Level 4 and enhances your abilities to engage in research activities. The module includes a short field trip to apply methods in 'the real world' developing the transferable skills. For students who are intending to write a dissertation at Level 6, this module provides an essential grounding.

In this module you will learn to understand, evaluate and analyse the merits and shortcomings of secondary data analysis of a large quantitative dataset, downloadable from the UK Data Archive. You will use these skills to generate sociological arguments based upon a large dataset.

The first section of this module introduces you to the key areas in the sociology of health and illness, bringing together the contribution of different perspectives and methodological approaches which characterise sociological research in this area. It will allow you to understand the dominance of the biomedical model and how it has come to attempt to define experiences of health and illness. The second section will introduce you to the concept of medicalisation and we will use this lens to interrogate the ways in which bodies are 'othered', compartmentalised and differently treated. The related field of 'healthism' will further be explored and you will be challenged to consider the potential advantages and disadvantages of such processes in relation to the perceptions and treatment of certain bodies. 

After completing the module you should be able to:

• Utilise sociological perspectives on musical identities to place them within their historical and sociocultural contexts.
• Explain the connections between music and people's diverse identities via concrete case examples.
• Explain the role of music in expressing, reflecting and modelling diverse individual and group identities, including marginalised identities.

After completing the module you should be able to:

• Identify and explain the origins of sociological analysis of cities.
• Analyse the nature of urban politics in the UK and other societies.
• Discuss and explain the nature, consequences and resistance to a range of urban issues in the UK and other societies.

After completing the module you should be able to:

• Understand how sociological perspectives can be applied to enhance employability and careers.
• Evaluate a range of sociological theories on work.
• Reflect on the employability skills gained during the course and how to negotiate a sociology related work placement.

It is increasingly recognised that globalisation, socio-economic and ecological interdependence, is revealed in the constant transition of people between places, societies and cultures, and globally generalised ecological impacts. Crime, its control, and social and environmental harms, transcend local and state borders – they have global dimensions. Global processes create newly marginalised and excluded groups, social constructions are destroyed, new ones emerge, organised and serious crime transcends traditional boundaries, places and identities. Globalisation also provides opportunities to contest these new elements of victimisation. This module will address these global dimensions of crime and harm, decolonise their criminological examination, explore emerging 'Southern' criminologies, Social Movements, resistance and the contested nature of crime and justice.

This module is concerned to address the substantive and growing criminological interest in the issue of victimization. It explores different theoretical perspectives associated with the study of victims and the victims place within regulatory and criminal justice practices. It will encourage students to critically explore the state's recognition of and responses, to victims and their demands for justice, along with the work of groups that campaign on behalf of particular groups of victims. The module will involve students' participating in interactive 2-hour workshops involving lecture input, small group activities and IT skills; attending tutorial (drop-in) sessions and receiving input from guest speakers who are experts in their fields.

This module provides you with an opportunity to develop your own sociological specialism by conducting an extended, in-depth study on a freely chosen topic in sociology. You will plan and design an extended piece of academic work and present the completed work as a written dissertation whilst demonstrating a detailed and critical understanding of a relevant field of sociological enquiry. You will be supported through group seminars to successfully complete the dissertation and will work with a staff supervisor to develop a critical understanding of your research topic.

This module provides you with an opportunity to develop your own sociological specialism by conducting an extended, in-depth study on a freely chosen topic in sociology. You will plan and design an extended piece of academic work and present the completed work as a written dissertation whilst demonstrating a detailed and critical understanding of a relevant field of sociological enquiry. You will be supported through group seminars to successfully complete the dissertation and will work with a staff supervisor to develop a critical understanding of your research topic.

This module provides the opportunity for you to undertake independent guided study on a topic, congruent with the aims and themes of the programme within an international context. You will also further develop a wide range of study skills in the process such as working in small groups, writing reflective blog posts, considering the ethics of blogging and social media and applying sociological concepts and ideas to an international setting. The module has a compulsory international fieldwork element incorporated which provides the backdrop to your study focus.

The module adopts various sociological and critical criminological approaches in the understanding of sport in contemporary societies. The module looks at issues relating to recent transformations, prejudices and cultural cohesion in the world of sport, focusing in particular on developments relating to issues such as racism, nationalism, globalisation and gender prejudice. The module will also be centrally concerned with the transformation of sport in the light of ongoing changes to a consumerist society.

In this module you will explore sociological and feminist debates around the body, gender and sexuality. You will engage with ideas which challenge the normative representations and 'taken for granted ideas' around body shape and image, gender and sexualities. It covers topics such as body modification, beauty, pornography, sex work, trans* identities and violences against the body.

This module aims to explain to you the place of music in society, using sociological theory to unlock the codes and secrets of musical culture and society. It is based on the premise that music is a social product, social resource and social practice. In doing so, the module focuses on the relationship between music and social life through a wide range of topics, including music as representation, the economy of music, the relationship between musical taste and social divisions, the political role of music, music as self-expression and political resistance, the changing media forms and technologies of sound production, the therapeutic potential of music, and more. In exploring these themes, you will consider all forms of music—popular, classical, folk and world—to reflect the vitality of musical expressions in the world today.

1. To explore the use and interpretation of visual data/representation in sociological analysis of variables and in theory past and present. 2. To familiarize students with the work of leading social documentary photographers and their relevance to recording and challenging social practices, conditions and inequalities. 3. To consider the methodological issues and ethical implications of gathering and interpreting visual data and provide opportunities to generate or collect visual data and subject it to critical sociological reflection. 4. To explore how visual representation is used by various members of society to communicate specific meanings and reinforce or challenge social values and arrangements with specific reference to the role of visual images and monuments in the individual and public experience of memory, recollection, trauma and remembrance. 5. To understand the range of visual representation extant in all areas of everyday life and examine the ways in which sensory experience is part of the ontology of the social being.This module encourages students to think sociologically about the role of visual images and representation in social life, and be able to sociologically analyse and explain the role and meaning of representations. In particular, the modules aims to make students familiar with contemporary and past examples of the use of visual representation, especially photography (and sometimes ethnographic film), by social documentary and street photographers and by sociologists and anthropologists. Students refine their skills of visual interpretation (gained at levels 4 and 5), and experience the research process of gathering and generating visual data for sociological analysis for themselves. Students apply sociological theory of visual representation to their own projects which includes analysis of ‘photography and family life’, of a case study analysis of a leading practitioner of visual sociology, and the production of a final visual essay.

This module provides students about to embark on their working lives with the opportunity to undertake a self-directed work placement relevant to the study of Sociology.

The aim is that students will be able to identify, assess and reflect upon how their skills and abilities transfer from their academic studies to the world of work and how these skills and abilities have been enhanced via their work placement.

The module also offers students opportunities to reflect on the links between their work placement experience and their programme of study.

This module will begin by examining major philosophical and theoretical approaches to the study of emotions. Thereafter the module will examine a series of case studies in aversive emotions such as fear, hate, anger, and disgust. By the end of the module, students will have a strong understanding of the ways in which we might approach the analysis of emotions, and will have covered a range of contemporary cases allowing them to unpick the politics and aesthetics of aversive emotion.

This module is designed to connect you with the growing and influential sub-field of cultural criminology. You will learn to understand the interfaces between crime, media, and culture, to understand the range of identifiable groups connected to notions of crime, deviance and social control as ‘cultural constructs’, and to appreciate the growing criminological significance of various new, popular and entertainment media.