Cultural and Media Studies BA

Course overview

You’ll explore cultural and media productions, practices and institutions in national, transnational and global contexts and across subject areas including philosophy, literature, sociology, art history, film, communication studies and digital humanities.

With a wide choice of modules, you’ll gain a real breadth of knowledge and be able to tailor your studies to focus on areas that interest you the most. You’ll examine issues such as conflict and its cultural mediation, migration and multicultural societies as well as utopian thinking and social activism in offline and online spaces. You’ll study difference across the globe, including race, class, gender, disability, the dialogue of analogue and digital technologies with our minds, bodies, ecologies, and other life forms, alongside the social effects of global communication networks.

The course is taught jointly by two distinctive departments (the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies and the School of Media and Communication), who combine innovative approaches to studying, making, and displaying culture and the arts with critical examinations of how people share knowledge, values and beliefs through television, journalism, film, online media and beyond.

You’ll become a critical and agile evaluator of cultural materials and mediated practices across diverse contexts, thereby allowing you to become global citizens who actively engage with contemporary societal challenges.

Entry requirements

A-level: ABB

International Baccalaureate

Career opportunities

This course equips you with essential skills in research, analysis, presentation and communication, as well as in critical audio-visual and cultural awareness.

All these qualities are valuable in diverse careers across a wide range of industries and roles such as the media, journalism, cultural and creative industries, education, politics, NGOs and the public sector.

A number of our graduates go on to postgraduate study at Leeds or another institution.

Graduate destinations on the job market include: positions in research, secondary and higher education, (digital) communication, PR and marketing roles in businesses, media, arts and cultural organisations, management and policy development in local government and the public/third sector more broadly. Among our graduates we also have radio presenters, curators, writers, singer-songwriters, solicitors and consultants.

The School is committed to helping you achieve your career ambitions. You work closely with staff in the School and careers advisers to source opportunities to gain experience, develop your skills and build networks. Our students are among the top 5 most targeted by top employers according to The Graduate Market 2022, High Fliers Research.

I'm interested in a career in media, similar to an internship I had writing for a magazine in London, which I got thanks to support from the School.