Master of Arts - Sociology

The 21st Century has witnessed rapid social changes, in terms of personal relationships, communities, politics and the technology used. The MA Sociology degree offers the tools to understand the drivers of this change as well as the challenges these present to societies.

Sociology provides distinct insights into the contested character of contemporary processes of global, national and local transformations, and how these transformations are driven by and reflected in the complexity of individual identities and allegiances.

The MA Sociology programme has a strong theoretical core, which critically examines the major sociological traditions as tools for understanding contemporary social transformations. The University of Birmingham will take these traditions and combine them with cutting edge theoretical frames to explain social phenomenon that are reshaping societies, such as: the rise of new technologies and social media; the rise of new forms of populist politics; widening socio economic inequalities; increasing forms of individualisation.

The programme will appeal to those who want to better understand complex shifts and transformations within societies. Alongside social theory, the MA Sociology programme offers a suite of optional modules that examine a range of social issues and divisions, such as crime, migration, poverty and inequality, race and ethnicity. Students will approach these issues by pursuing distinctively sociological questions of the relationships between individuals, groups, institutions and wider social processes; the dynamics of stability and change and the distribution of power. This will be paralleled by training in the analysis of empirical sociological research, the design of research programmes and the methods for collecting, interpreting and presenting sociological data.