Program Overview
Led by experienced professionals, the program combines theory, policy, and practice. Students gain specialized knowledge in criminology through mandatory and optional modules, with an emphasis on modern issues such as modern slavery, county lines, and group offending. The program equips graduates with advanced skills in research, policy analysis, and practical implementation within the crime and justice field.
Program Outline
Degree Overview:
The MA Criminology program at the University of Suffolk is a one-year full-time or two-year part-time program that addresses contemporary issues within the study of crime, community safety, and criminal justice. The program aims to equip students with specialist knowledge of current trends and historical debates surrounding crime causation, crime control, and regulation in the UK and internationally. The program is led and taught by professionals with crime and community safety backgrounds who apply criminological theory in the real world.
Outline:
The MA Criminology program is structured around a series of modules, including both mandatory and optional choices. The program is designed to enable progression in research, policy, and practice roles within the crime and justice field.
Year 1 Modules:
- Mandatory Modules:
- Theories of Crime and Social Deviance: This module introduces students to the historical origins of theoretical perspectives on crime and social deviance, analyzing their scope, explanatory power, criticisms, and the social and political conditions under which they emerged. It also involves a critical consideration of contemporary debates and controversies in the areas of crime and victimization.
- Principles of Research: This introductory module provides a fundamental grounding in research methods and skills for postgraduate students, covering both quantitative and qualitative research, ethical frameworks, and practical applications of research techniques.
- Dissertation: This mandatory module allows students to demonstrate their advanced scholarship and academic abilities through an original, creative, and ethical research project. It brings together the work undertaken in previous modules, developing the rapid evidence assessment and research proposal into a research project designed, carried out, and evaluated by the students themselves.
- Optional Modules:
- Young People, Group Offending & Violent Crime: This module critically examines theory and research on group offending by young people, primarily in the UK, Mainland Europe, and North America. It analyzes gang policy and identifies effective intervention modes. It introduces students to the historical origins of theories, ideas, policies, and practices operationalized within criminal justice in the UK, analyzing their effects and the social, economic, and political conditions under which they emerged. It explores the concept of victimization, the experiences of crime victims, and developments in response to them both within and outside of the state.
- Green Criminology: This module explores the diverse field of green criminology, examining theories and crimes against the natural environment. It also considers how green criminology shifts the focus of criminology away from state-centered processes to the diverse power distributions that emerge with globalization.
- Organised Crime: This module explores the different forms of organized crime and the links between different crime organizations.
Teaching:
The program is taught by professionals with extensive experience in the criminal justice and legal system.
Careers:
The MA Criminology program aims to equip students with the skills and competences that employers are looking for, including research and analysis, policy development and interpretation, independent thought, writing and presentation, time management, and leadership skills. The program is designed to enable progression in research, policy, and practice roles within the crime and justice field.
Other:
The program emphasizes a key focus on modern slavery, county lines, and group offending.
£9,090 per year UK Part-time Tuition Fee £1,010 per 20 credit module International Full-time Tuition Fee £14,625