Politics BA(Hons)

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Top reasons to choose this course

• Learn in a vibrant, progressive city with a reputation for radical, environmental, and LGBTQI+ activism. 

• Your lecturers are internationally recognised researchers on issues including populism, gender studies, the Middle East, environmentalism, migration, housing and political theory. 

• You will engage with cutting edge academic research. The university’s Centre for Philosophy, Politics and Ethics hosts regular talks, seminars, workshops and conferences and offers an annual undergraduate research prize. 

• Guest speakers have included Caroline Lucas and Sue Shanks (Green Party), Yousef Eldin (BBC documentary producer), Nancy Hawker (Amnesty International) and Prof Angie Wilson (ex-Chair of the Political Studies Association, researching sexuality and politics), as well as representatives from Make the Shift, The Free West Papua Campaign and Brighton & Hove Community Land Trust. 

• Assignments don’t just mean essays, you'll be assessed in lots of ways including films, podcasts, data visualisations, political speeches, social media campaigns; the types of projects that will be valued by employers.  

• Graduate with both theoretical and practical knowledge. Our courses offer practical skills and real-world experiences to prepare you for your future careers, with opportunities to undertake placements, design a campaign for a political organisation and learn digital communication skills. 

• The university’s commitment to addressing global challenges is the lens through which you will learn and issues such as climate change, equality and inclusivity, and sustainability are embedded in all teaching on our politics courses. 

• Our decolonised approach to teaching and learning emphasises lived experience, recognising that knowledge is held in communities not only in academic institutions. 

• You will be studying in a thriving community alongside students taking related degrees which informs our delivery.

Year 1 

In your first year, you will study six modules that introduce you to the subject area. 

Modules

• Introduction to the  Global Challenges Lab

  Supported by a tutor, you'll design and conduct a research project that addresses one of the global challenges identified by the UN’s sustainable development goals. You'll learn how to create blogs, podcasts and short films to communicate your research and ideas to a non-academic audience.

• Political Ideas

  This module gives a broad overview of the academic study of politics. You'll focus on core concepts of political science and political theory, and then apply those to political processes, institutions, ideologies and the nature of political change. You'll cover the core conceptual material needed for more advanced study in politics, and also be introduced to ideas and approaches that can be applied in other social sciences.

• Foundations in World Politics

  This module will introduce you to a critical historical perspective on the modern international political system. You will examine how the peoples and governments of the world came to be linked through an imperial system by exploring major world events and processes of global history. By taking a long view of modern politics, the module is an opportunity for you to place world politics in its historical context. The key topics you will explore include the origins of the international political system, slavery, imperial and colonial expansion, anti-colonial resistance and liberation, global governance, controversy and historiography.

• Politics in Practice

  This module introduces ideas about how politics is practiced by state and non-state actors at local, national, and international levels. You'll take part in field trips, Q+As with political actors and engagement with political communications. You'll also be introduced to methods of data collection, as well as forms of qualitative and quantitative analysis.

• Comparative Political Systems

  On this module you will be introduced to some of the key features of politics including institutions, political actors and political processes. You'll identify the most important political hallmarks, for example: the legislature, the executive, political parties, and electoral processes, in at least two contemporary states that illustrate democratic, partially democratic, or/and authoritarian political systems. You'll also be introduced to political concepts, such as power and the state, in order to analyse and compare those political systems.

• Introduction to Environmental Politics

  This module introduces you to the key theories and global institutions relevant to environmental politics, and how these debates apply in practice to contemporary and historical issues of climate crisis. You will learn about environmental justice, ecological modernisation, fossil capitalism and environmental ethics, alongside studying the global institutions that contest climate politics including the UN, nation states, fossil fuel companies and protest movements.

Year 2

In year two you'll explore British politics and theories of government and policy, and begin to learn the fundamentals of research methods and ethics, in preparation for your final year dissertation.

You'll also choose the subjects that interest you most through option modules.

Core modules

• UK Politics
• Researching Politics
• We, The People
• Authority, Democracy and Justice

Options*

• Debating Contemporary International Relations

• War, Violence and Terror
• The Politics of Critique
• Unruly Bodies: Understanding and Contesting Normativity
• International Institutions
• Nations and Nationalism
• Structuralism, Poststructuralism and the Politics of Critique
• Experiencing the Workplace: Practices and the Community
• Development and Sustainability

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Final year

Modules

• Politics Dissertation
• Activism and Social Change

Options*

• Radical Political Economy and Anarchist Politics

• Global Social Policy
• Politics in the Middle East
• Race and International Relations
• Politics of the Right
• Care Ethics and Social Policy
• Sociology of Globalisation
• Human Rights and Humanitarian Intervention

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Lab facilities

Mithras House is home to all our School of Humanities and Social Science courses. It has a series of ‘labs’, which may be used for teaching on your course or in your independent research work.

Life lab
A comfortable space with lounge furniture intended for qualitative research with larger groups. Due to its relaxed layout and naturalistic environment, the space is suited to research using focus groups, research using observation-based methods and child research.

The space is also used for teaching on some social science courses, as well as for dissertation research for projects.
 
City lab
A space designed for collaborative student learning. It is used by students and staff involved in the university’s Global Challenges programme, our collective mission to contribute towards solutions to tackling the pressing issues facing our world.

Design lab
A space housing our extensive collection of historic dress and textiles, which are used in some teaching on our History of Art and Design courses. It has the space and equipment to work on textile projects. Displays created by students on these programmes are on view in the social spaces of the building.

Stats lab
A specialist workspace with computing equipment for statistical analysis and projects involving video and audio editing software. The lab is accessible as a study space to students on psychology courses.

It is also available to students studying courses involving video and audio recording and editing, such as politics degrees and our creative writing programmes. The stats lab contains eight soundproof booths for recording or transcribing interviews undertaken as part of dissertation research.

VR and eye tracking lab
This lab is used for psychological research, specifically eye-tracking research and virtual reality research. Equipment includes an electroencephalography (EEG) headset and Electrodermal Activity (EDA) equipment.

Meet the team

Robin Jervis, co-course leader

Robin's research focus is in the field of political economy. He is interested in ideas of ownership of resources, particularly in alternative models of public ownership informed by anarchist and Marxist traditions and how these approaches can relate to radical understandings of democracy and ‘ideal’ or ‘developmental’ conceptions of liberty.

Robin's teaching style blends learning technologies with more traditional seminar teaching approaches. Robin is currently working on a series of projects which focus on alternatives to capitalism, as well as an ongoing research project examining perceptions of social justice using psychological techniques. Read Robin's full profile.

Dr Andy Knott, co-course leader

Andy works in political theory, with a specific interest in political subjects, especially individualism and the people of populism, as well as debates across contemporary democratic theory.

His current research is focused on populism and recent projects have involved: the thorny question of defining populism; analysing populism's beginnings; left-wing populism; and populism and political subjects. Read Andy's full profile.

Other staff who teach on the course include: Dr Clare Woodford, Dr Heba Youssef, Dr Chris Wyatt, Prof Mark Devenney, Dr Robin Dunford, Dr German Primera Villamiza, Dr Chrystie Myketiak and Dr Zoe Sutherland.

Course fees

The fees listed here are for the first year of full-time study if you start your course in the academic year 2025–26.

You will pay fees for each year of your course. Some fees may increase each year.

UK undergraduate and some postgraduate fees are regulated by the UK government and increases will not be more than the maximum amount allowed. Course fees that are not regulated may increase each year by up to 5% or RPI (whichever is higher).

If you are studying part-time your fee will usually be calculated based on the number of modules that you take.

Find out more

• Brighton Boost – cost of living help for our new undergrad students. Find out about how we can help with your study, accommodation or travel costs and more...
• Fees, bursaries, scholarships and government funding info for UK and international undergraduate students
• Student finance and budgeting while studying
• Read our student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf) for more on University of Brighton tuition fees.

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