Combined Honours in Social Sciences Durham University

Overview

Our Combined Honours in Social Sciences BA course offered by Durham University enables you to choose modules from two, three or even four subjects, enabling you to develop your expertise or to explore new interests. The course provides a flexible, multidisciplinary framework with the opportunity to spend a year abroad or on a work placement, preparing you for your career ambitions.

Key facts

You will be focusing on subjects in the Social Sciences, but you can take up to half of your credits in the Arts and Humanities.

With this degree, you can design your own programme of study, so depending on your choices you learn through a combination of lectures, seminars, tutorials, practical classes, fieldwork, excavation, informal but scheduled one-on-one support, and self-directed learning, such as research, reading, and writing.

All of are supported by a virtual learning environment, Durham University Online (DUO). Seminars, workshops, and practical classes are much smaller groups than lectures. In some subjects practicals also allow hands-on experience of the work of professionals in the disciplines studied on the course.

The emphasis on small-group and practical teaching reflects a conscious choice to enhance the quality of the learning experience rather than the number of formal sessions. Small-group teaching and one-on-one attention from your personal academic adviser (provided when you start) are part of the learning experience throughout, by the final year classroom time gives way to independent research, including a dissertation, supported by one-on-one supervision that makes up a third of your final year credits. This degree transforms you from a consumer of knowledge in the classroom to a generator of knowledge, ready for professional or postgraduate life.

These formal teaching arrangements are supported by “drop-in” surgeries with teaching staff and induction sessions that begin the week before you start and continue at key times throughout each year of the course.

You can also attend an extensive programme of research-focused seminars where staff and visiting scholars in various academic departments present their cutting-edge research.

Assessment methods vary and depend on your module and subject choices but typically include examinations, essays, presentations and research projects.