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What makes History and Sociology at Worcester special?

Studied in combination, History and Sociology provide engrossing opportunities to investigate the origins, development, and organisation of social, cultural, and political life. You’ll gain a deeper understanding of the present through analysing the changes in historical societies across different time periods. You will become skilled at research and at communicating your research as you explore the roles that these disciplines play in social and political understanding and change.

The joint honours course utilises lecturers, seminars, and placements – led by a research-focused team – to provide a well-rounded educational environment. Students graduate with critical thinking skills and practical experience that is valued by employers across a multitude of industries.

Overview

Overview

Key Features

  • A wide range of modules in British, European and World History from the 16th to 20th centuries
  • A close student/staff community with regular course activities, socials, quizzes, and trips, including to Parliament in London
  • History assessment is mostly by coursework and designed to enable you to acquire skills in research, analysis and communication            
  • Course engagement with urgent and key issues facing contemporary societies           
  • Opportunities to acquire research, communication and other valued skills            
  • Opportunities to gain work experience, study abroad for a semester, be involved in volunteering activities and to act as a student representative and paid ambassador
  • Tailor your course to your individual needs with a joint honours degree   
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Entry requirements

Entry requirements

104
UCAS tariff points

Entry Requirements

104 UCAS Tariff points

Other information

If you have any questions about entry requirements, please contact the Admissions Office on 01905 855111 or email admissions@worc.ac.uk for advice.

Further information about the UCAS Tariff can be obtained from UCAS.

Course content

Course content

Our courses are informed by research and current developments in the discipline and feedback from students, external examiners and employers. Modules do therefore change periodically in the interests of keeping the course relevant and reflecting best practice. The most up-to-date information will be available to you once you have accepted a place and registered for the course. If there are insufficient numbers of students interested in an optional module, this might not be offered, but we will advise you as soon as possible and help you choose an alternative. 

Year 1

Mandatory

  • Britain since the Reformation
  • Reconstructing the Past: Academic, Public and Popular History
  • Sociology: Approaching the Crisis
  • Sociology in Practice
  • Visual Sociology

Year 2

Mandatory

  • Sociology: from Origins to Present

Optional

  • Practical Research in Sociology
  • Sociology of Crime
  • Work Project
  • Development and Change in the Global South
  • Sociology of ‘Race’: Global Perspectives
  • Digital Sociology
  • Environmental Sociology
  • Historical Research: Method and Practice
  • The American Century, 1917-2001 
  •  The German Empire, 1862-1918
  • History Work Experience Module
  • War and Peace: The Making of Modern Ireland 
  • ‘A People’s War?’ Britain and the Second World War
  • Georgian Britain and the Atlantic World, 1760-1820.
  • Heritage Tourism and Place Promotion 

Year 3

Mandatory

  • N/A

Optional

  • Pornography and Modern Culture
  • History of Sexuality
  • Education and the Sociological Imagination
  • Constructing Emotions
  • Global Power: Sociological Perspectives
  • Sociology of Religion
  • Sociology of the Body
  • Sociology Extension Module
  • Independent Study/Dissertation
  • The Good War: USA in World War 2 
  • The Atlantic Slave Trade
  • Nazi Germany
  • Research Experience Module
  • British Imperialism, c.1857-1972
  • Gender, Sexuality and Welfare. The Body in History.
  • Witchcraft and the Devil
  • Japan's World, 1854-1951      
Teaching and assessment

Teaching and assessment

For more information about teaching, learning and assessment on this course, please see the single honours course pages for History BA (Hons) and Sociology BA (Hons)

History at Worcester is designed to enable you to study the types of history that appeal to you most. Informed by cutting-edge research on key questions of our time, it offers you the opportunity to study the political, cultural and social history of Britain, Europe and the wider world from the 16th to 20th centuries. The course begins with a broad introduction to many of today’s debates surrounding history and approaches to historical study. It ends with the opportunity for you to produce a major piece of work on a topic of your choice, supported by one-to-one supervision. History provides you with opportunities to benefit directly from your lecturers’ cutting-edge research and research interests – which include, amongst many others, the Devil in Tudor and Stuart England, US propaganda in the Second World War, appeasement, the transatlantic slave trade and the home front in World Wars 1 and 2.

Sociology at University of Worcester provides a dynamic and unique focus on contemporary sociological perspectives, research, and challenges, with particular emphasis on work-based learning and the development of graduate employability skills, and new and exciting fields in contemporary Sociology, including Digital Sociology, Environmental Sociology, and Sociology of Health. In studying Sociology at University of Worcester, you will join a lively research-focused team of staff and students trying to make sense of the contemporary social world.

As you progress through your studies you are increasingly able to focus on areas of particular interest to you and you are encouraged to pursue original thought and ideas. Throughout, you will be addressing urgent and key issues facing people in contemporary societies.

Programme specification

For comprehensive details on the aims and intended learning outcomes of the course, and the means by which these are achieved through learning, teaching and assessment, please download the latest History programme specification and Sociology programme specification documents.

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Professor Darren Oldridge

Darren Oldridge is a specialist in sixteenth and seventeenth-century religious history. His interests include witchcraft and the Devil, the supernatural, and the religious context of the English Civil Wars. A recurring theme of his work is the rationality underpinning apparently strange beliefs: this is reflected, most recently, in the new edition of Strange Histories (Routledge: 2017). More broadly, he is interested in the relationship between poetry and film and the past.

At Worcester Darren teaches modules that reflect these interests, including The Early Modern World and Witchcraft and the Devil. At present he is editing the third edition of The Witchcraft Reader, to be published by Routledge in 2018.

Candid headshot of Suzanne Schwarz

Professor Suzanne Schwarz

Suzanne Schwarz’s teaching at the University of Worcester focuses on the transatlantic slave trade and West Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She also focuses on developing historical research skills for students through the study of regional and local history. She was the recipient of two student-led teaching awards in 2013 and 2014.

Dr Wendy Toon

Wendy Toon is an historian of the United States of America, specialising in the twentieth century. She is currently writing Images of the Enemy: American Constructions of the Germans and Japanese in World War Two (Routledge, forthcoming 2020).

Wendy joined the University of Worcester in September 2002. She previously held positions at Staffordshire University and Keele University, and was a Royal Historical Society Fellow (Peter Marshall Fellowship) at the Institute of Historical Research.  

Dr Paddy McNally


Paddy McNally's teaching and research interests are focused on Irish history from 1690 until 1848, German history from 1870 to 1945, and the history of political thought. He is author of the book, Parties, Patriots and Undertakers. Parliamentary politics in early Hanoverian Ireland and numerous articles on eighteenth-century Irish history. He is currently writing From the Boyne to the Famine. A thematic history of Ireland, 1690-1848, to be published by Routledge. He teaches specialist modules on Irish history 1690-1848, German history 1870-1945, and Nationalism. He has successfully supervised PhD and MPhil students to completion and welcomes expressions of interest from prospective postgraduate researchers in most aspects of British and Irish history from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries.

Dr Jenny Lewin-Jones

Dr Jenny Lewin-Jones

Jenny teaches in Sociology, with particular interests in environmental and digital sociology, education, and emotions. Her research focuses on the role of language in social change. 

Jenny runs our Sociology Course Twitter account @sociologyworc.

Dr Luke Devine

Luke is currently Course Leader for Sociology

Dr Simon Hardy

Dr Simon Hardy

Simon has lectured at Worcester in Sociology and Media & Cultural Studies since 1995, with specialisms in the history of sexuality, the sociology of pornography and contemporary media coverage of warfare.

Anna Muggeridge

Dr Anna Muggeridge

Dr Anna Muggeridge is a historian of modern Britain with a particular specialism in women’s and gender history. She researches histories of women’s political activism, with a particular focus on the local. Currently, she is researching a history of women in local government in interwar England and Wales, as well as working collaboratively with colleagues at a number of other institutions on projects related to women’s activism in the twentieth century.

Dr Elspeth King

Dr Elspeth King

Elspeth King joined the university in August 2022 after 8 years of being an Associate Lecturer. Her research and teaching interests are in twentieth-century British history, especially the First and Second World Wars and Women’s History.

Elspeth is also interested in social class and the impact this has on the lived experience of people in everyday life.

Careers

Careers

History graduates from Worcester have progressed in recent years to take up work in a variety of career sectors, including teaching, accountancy, law, the media industries, local government, the police, retailing, administration, marketing, management and university lecturing and research. A growing number of our graduates progress to postgraduate research in history, both at the University of Worcester and at other universities. Thus, History remains an attractive and personally satisfying degree to study, with a strong track record of supporting graduate employability in a range of professional, managerial, administrative and media-related careers.

A degree in Sociology is a gateway to many careers, especially jobs that involve managing and communicating with people, thinking out solutions to problems, and understanding the diverse society in which we live. Our graduates have an excellent employment record and have taken up a variety of careers, including careers in housing, the probation service, youth work, caring professions, social services, the police, business and personnel management, public relations, media, marketing, and teaching. In order to help you reflect, plan and work on your career and progression aspirations, Sociology provides a number of opportunities for you to discuss and develop them.

Two students are walking next to each other and smiling

Careers and Employability

Our Graduates pursue exciting and diverse careers in a wide variety of employment sectors.

Find out how we can support you to achieve your potential
Costs

Fees and funding

Full-time tuition fees

UK and EU students

The standard fee for full-time home and EU undergraduate students enrolling on BA/BSc/LLB degrees and FdA/FdSc degrees in the 2024/25 academic year is £9,250 per year.

For more details, please visit our course fees page.

International students

The standard tuition fee for full-time international students enrolling on BA/BSc/LLB degrees and FdA/FdSc degrees in the 2024/25 academic year is £16,200 per year.

For more details, please visit our course fees page.

Part-time tuition fees

UK and EU students

The standard tuition fees for part-time UK and EU students enrolling on BA/BSc/LLB degrees and FdA/FdSc degrees in the academic year 2024/25 are £1,156 per 15-credit module, £1,542 per 20-credit module, £2,312 per 30-credit module, £3,083 per 40-credit module, £3,469 per 45-credit module and £4,625 per 60 credit module.

For more details, please visit our course fees page.

Additional costs

Every course has day-to-day costs for basic books, stationery, printing and photocopying. The amounts vary between courses.

If your course offers a placement opportunity, you may need to pay for an Enhanced Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check.

Accommodation

Finding the right accommodation is paramount to your university experience. Our halls of residence are home to friendly student communities, making them great places to live and study.

We have over 1,000 rooms across our range of student halls. With rooms to suit every budget and need, from our 'Traditional Hall' at £131 per week to 'En-suite Premium' at £221 per week (2024/25 prices).

For full details visit our accommodation page.

How to apply

How to apply

Apply through UCAS

History and Sociology BA (Hons) - VL13

UCAS is the central organisation through which applications are processed for entry onto full-time undergraduate courses in Higher Education in the UK.

Read our How to apply pages for more information on applying and to find out what happens to your application.

UCAS Code

VL13

Get in touch

If you have any questions, please get in touch. We're here to help you every step of the way.

Professor Neil Fleming

Admissions Tutor, History

Dr Jenny Lewin-Jones

Admissions Tutor, Sociology