Digital Media with a Year Abroad

Explore how digital technologies shape cultures, communities, and creativity around the world.

This truly global degree offers an exciting opportunity to explore and participate in the digital transformation of cultures. The production and consumption of culture in the twenty-first century is refracted through digital technologies, and you will gain the skills and knowledge needed to appreciate how this is changing our understanding of the past, present and future. You will not only analyse cultural and digital content but also create and publish it yourself, alongside developing a nuanced understanding of various cultural forms from around our increasingly globalised world, including Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Taught through a mixture of lectures, seminars, workshops, coursework and independent study, this degree allows you to acquire knowledge and understanding of key issues in both digital media and global cultures. In addition, you will develop important academic skills (such as analysis, communication and media literacy) and personal attributes (teamworking and independent researching, for example), all of which are essential to your future career aspirations. By learning how to identify and apply creative approaches and ideas across cultural differences as well different media, you will be able to respond to employers' needs for skills in global awareness and intercultural competence. Thus, you will gain the interdisciplinary and communications expertise in digital and written forms needed to succeed in a range of career pathways, including in the fast-paced and growing fields of the creative and cultural industries.

Your progress is assessed in a variety of ways, including (but not limited to) presentations, essays, creative projects (including digital filmmaking), portfolios, reading diaries and a final year project, which can be either research or practice based – it’s your choice. You can also increasingly pursue your own interests and develop your individual talents through the modules that you select over the course of the degree, allowing you to focus more on practical skills, traditional academic learning, or a blend of the two.

Introduction to (Digital) Media (15 credits)
Digital Practice: An Introduction (15 credits)
Ghost in the Machine: Uncanny Media from the Typewriter to the Chatbot (15 credits)
Understanding Global Cultures (15 credits)
Knowledge and Power (30 credits)

• 30 credits of elective (optional) modules, for example:
  Language and AI
  Scriptwriting: Creativity and Technique
  Myths and Debates about Human Language
  Brief Encounters: Around the World in Short Stories
  Year 2
  Digital Culture and Society (15 credits)
  Race and Digital Media (15 credits)
  Adventures in World Literature (15 credits)
  Digital Filmmaking/The Visual Essay (15 credits, alternating years)

• 60 credits of elective (optional) modules, for example:
  Literatures of the Postcolonial World
  History of the Internet
  To be Continued: Adaptations of Global Literary Classics
  Contemporary World Cinemas
  Coding for linguists
  Other Ways of Seeing Modern Art
  Language modules: French, Spanish, Russian, German, Mandarin, Arabic, Japanese, Portuguese or Catalan
  Year 3
  Literary Culture in the Digital Age (15 credits)
  Digital Media and Global Cultures Research Project OR Digital Media and Global Cultures Practice Project (30 credits)

+75 credits of elective (optional) modules, for example:
Videogames: History, Culture and Representation from Pacman to Pokemon
Creative Producing
Culture from Below: The Politics of the Popular
The Digital Critic: Reading with Computers
Poetry and Media
Multimodality, Media and Language
Look Who’s Computing Now
School of the Arts Review (STAR): Edit, Write, Publish
Language modules: French, Spanish, Russian, German, Mandarin, Arabic, Japanese, Portuguese or Catalan

Assessment typically includes a combination of exams and coursework, or coursework only. The final year may include completion of a research project.

To work as a teacher at a state school in England or Wales, you will need to achieve qualified teacher status (QTS). This is offered on this course for the following level:

• Course does not award QTS