Media and Culture

Drawing together perspectives from the arts, humanities and social sciences, the BA Media and Culture programme provides students with critical and interdisciplinary skills to analyse and navigate the complex entanglements of culture, media and everyday life in the contemporary world. Study in a department currently ranked within the world top 75 and 5thin the UK for Communication (Shanghai Global Rankings of Academic Subjects 2025). The programme offers informed, critical and innovative approaches to the study of contemporary culture and media.

You will study media and communications within their wider cultural context, preparing you to engage with the cultural sector and for careers in the cultural, arts and heritage industries. The programme also offers strong foundations for those wishing to pursue postgraduate studies in a wide range of fields. On this course, media are not understood in isolation as channels for communication, but as practices embedded in institutions and in everyday experience.

Because studying contemporary culture and media requires you to become familiar with a range of theories and methods, we introduce you to critical concepts and perspectives drawn from cultural studies, film and media studies, social and visual anthropology, sociology, cultural history, the visual arts, cultural geography and more. You can add to these interdisciplinary perspectives by choosing optional classes or modules from across the Department and Faculty. All of our single honours programmes share acommon first yearconsisting of four compulsory modules, giving you the flexibility to change to another one of our programmes at the end of your first year.

This programme is available with an optionalyear in industry. If you choose this option, year three is spent on a paid placement within an organisation in industry, broadly defined. You will be supported by the School of the Arts and the Department throughout, and your reflexive written account of the experience wil