MA (Hons) Geography and Sociology Bachelor's degree at the University of Aberdeen

Evaluation designed to find out if your academic writing is of a sufficient standard to enable you to succeed at university and, if you need it, to provide support to improve. It is completed on-line via MyAberdeen with clear instructions to guide you through it.

Prescribed for level 1 undergraduate students and articulating students who are in their first year at the University, is studied entirely online, takes approximately 2-3 hours to complete and can be taken in one sitting, or spread across the first 4 weeks of term. Topics include University orientation overview, equality & diversity, MySkills, health, safety and cyber security, and academic integrity.

This course reflects upon the role humans have played in creating the Anthropocene (the epoch we are now living in), a time period during which human actions have become more significant than natural processes in shaping our world. Drawing primarily upon perspectives from physical and human geography, the nature of the changes, "how did we get here?", are considered, laying the foundations for GG1512, in which "what comes after?" – how contemporary society is attempting to tackle Anthropocene ch

Sociology is the study of human social groups. It particularly focuses on modern societies, analysing how they work and how the major social institutions in them (such as religion, the media, government and the economy) operate. The course provides students with a general introduction to the unique manner in which sociologists seek to understand contemporary societies. Students are presented with current and classical approaches to understanding the social processes that underlie self-constructi

This course interrogates the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. These encompass contemporary global challenges such as responsible consumption and production, no poverty, clean water and climate action (challenges whose emergence is introduced in GG1010 Creating the Anthropocene). Drawing upon Human and Physical Geography perspectives, a 'strong' interpretation of sustainability, one where social and economic dimensions fundamentally rely on ecological foundations, underpins the cour

This course is an introduction to macro-sociology, which analyses the ways that people's lives are shaped by large-scale forces, structures, and institutions. Students are introduced to the particular ways in which classical and contemporary sociologists understand social forces in the modern domestic and global environment and learn to think critically about those social forces that impact their everyday lives using the sociological imagination. Substantive topics likely to be covered in this c

GG2014 examines political, economic, social and cultural change from a geographical perspective. The course consists of five distinct blocks, each of which introduces a specific sub-field of human geography – economic, urban, tourism, cultural and social geography. As a team-taught course, it makes use of a range of concepts and uses case studies drawn from the staff's own fields of research. As well as geography, the course is designed to be accessible and relevant to students from other arts a

This follows on from level-one sociology. It is designed to highlight the ways that sociological theory informs the research endeavour, not only the questions sociologists raise, but also the particular modes through which we go about investigating them. The module examines these points in relation to a range of micro-level topics – the body, food and feeding, health and illness, the emotions, group behaviour, sex and gender, the life course and death and dying – all of which emphasise the natur

This course introduces students to a range of scientific and social scientific skills and techniques used in Geography. The course content builds towards a residential field trip that takes place in the Easter vacation. Past venues have included the Isles of Skye and Arran, the cities of Inverness and Stirling, and Aviemore in the Cairngorms National Park. The trips enable students to put into practice the skills and techniques they have been taught through lectures and in workgroup sessions, an

This macro-sociology course extends students' understanding of large-scale social, as well as political and economic, processes and institutions. Particular focus is on the sociological analysis of global issues and socio-political controversies, many of which are subject to topical and, at times, contentious debate at the beginning of the 21st century. The substantive topics include areas of social and political concern such as globalisation; the changing nature of economy, work and leisure; ri

This course provides an understanding of environmental processes and landscape change through time and space. The course places Physical Geography as an integral component of Earth System Science. The first half of the course explores physical environmental processes, whilst the second focuses on evidence of environmental change across a range of temporal and spatial scales. Three themes of glaciology, hydrology and palaeoecology will be explored to illustrate the linkages and interactions betwe

This course explores the complex and dynamic relationship between the environment and human societies. It examines how social, economic, and political factors influence environmental policies and practices, and how environmental changes, in turn, affect human societies. Through case studies such as using environmental ethics to think about tuna fishing and whale conservation, or engaging with the idea of putting a price on nature through natural capital approaches, students will gain a comprehen

In a digital era of GPS navigators and many online map tools (e.g. Google Maps), there is an increase demand for professionals able to understand and manipulate geographical data and use these to monitor processes at various scales. The course provides a solid background in the acquisition of geographical data, both onshore and offshore with classic field-based and remote sensing techniques. It covers the creation and interpretation of maps and looks at the history of remote sensing and its scie

This core course is designed to introduce Honours students to key debates on the nature and scope of academic geography. Geographers past and present have studied a huge variety of phenomena using a variety of tools to investigate their subject. This course will help you understand this diversity. Topics include: the changing meaning of the 'environment'; the use and abuse of statistical analysis; the influence of left-wing and post-modern perspectives, and the role of technology. Students may s

Sociologists use a range of methods and techniques to explore and test sociological theory. This module introduces many of these methods and techniques. It aims to ground students' theoretical understanding of society through the practical analysis of a variety of data. It starts by introducing the varying philosophical starting points of research and goes on to provide foundation level critical analysis skills in the key quantitative and qualitative methods that sociologists have deployed to un

This course bridges the theoretical emphasis of SO3066 and the methodological elements of SO3524. It presents sociology as a social science by having students examine and discuss in detail ten reports of sociological research. The goal of the course is to highlight the different ways sociological research combines theory and methods to examine and explain specific phenomena, events, or experiences of the world. Each of the ten studies will be chosen by one of the Sociology staff and present theo

Thinking Sociologically is the department's core sociological theory module. The course offers our students an introduction to a range of key sociological thinkers and bodies of thought, both classical and contemporary, that inform sociological analysis of social life and social institutions. As such, this course is intended to provide our honours students with a conceptual 'toolkit', that can be applied to facilitate understanding, insight and informed critique with respect to a broad range of

This course provides students with...