Global Challenges (Social Cohesion) BASc

The Core Spine encourages you to think boldly about global challenges in a creative and transdisciplinary manner. It will build skills in creative thinking, the use of creative research and development methods, as well as scaffolding a range of essential individual and team-based skills needed for the workplace and for effective agency as an engaged member of society and your community.

The core spine is made up of four elements:

• A transdisciplinary approach to global challenges will introduce you to key thinkers and approaches across a range of natural sciences, humanities and social sciences. You will also learn how to think across these boundaries, in a transdisciplinary, problem-focused way, and go on to apply transdisciplinary thinking to a range of real world problems.
• Creative thinking with be developed in a weekly ‘ideas lab’ where you will learn about creative ideas that have challenged and changed traditional modes of thinking. You will develop your own creative thinking skills and apply these to project work, stakeholder engagement, and communicating and disseminating project findings.
• Creative research methods will introduce you to the basics of quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, and to the philosophy of natural and social scientific methods. Having learned these building-blocks you will then advance to learning creative research methods, such as programming and data manipulation, transformative methods such as community engagement and participatory research, arts-based research,visual methods, and how to use mixed-methods approaches. You will also learn and apply creative forms of engagement and presentation of data.
• Skills development will build your capacity to work effectively in teams, and you will develop skills in project management, client management, making a business case, presentation skills (including team pitches, blogs, vlogs, policy briefings, press releases and project reports), and preparing for the job market and job interviews.

The third year Enterprize Project will bring all these skills together in a stakeholder-defined global challenges group project.

Social Cohesion is an introductory idea in the study of societies and what binds them together. It is not easily or singly defined but rather remains an evolving concept, responding to economic and political environments. Indeed, in many cases it will be the difficulty in defining Social Cohesion, and it’s all too frequent absence, that will be an issue you will analyse.

This strand addresses the causes and consequences of social inequalities and the ways in which they can be tackled. The scope of the strand is ambitious, linked to both contemporary concerns and historical patterns. The versatile nature of the degree is uniquely placed to allow students to consider today’s most pressing issues including, migration, social inclusion, and freedom of expression.

Level 1 (first year)

• Addressing Global Challenges
• Introduction to Global Challenges
• Understanding Social Cohesion
• Introduction to Social Cohesion

Level 2 (second year)

• Addressing Global Challenges
• Addressing Contemporary Global Challenges
• Analysing Movements and Technologies
• Introduction to Social Cohesion
• Movements & Technologies

Level 3 (third year)

• Arts and Sciences Dissertation in Global Challenges
• Global Challenges in Practice
• Investigating Challenges & Communities

Read more about the structure of undergraduate degrees at Brunel