Study abroad

Your education extends beyond the university campus. We support you in expanding your education through offering the opportunity to spend a year or a term studying abroad at one of our partner universities. The four-year version of our degree allows you to spend the third year abroad or employed on a placement abroad, while otherwise remaining identical to the three-year course.

Studying abroad allows you to experience other cultures and languages, to broaden your degree socially and academically, and to demonstrate to employers that you are mature, adaptable, and organised.

If you spend a full year abroad you’ll only pay 15% of your usual tuition fee to Essex for that year. You won’t pay any tuition fees to your host university

Our expert staff

At Essex you learn from the best. Our course director Tim Fenton, is a former managing editor of the BBC News Online website and a journalist with more than 35 years’ industry experience ranging from sports reporting for local radio to presenting and producing national current affairs programmes on TV and radio.

Other core journalism staff include:

• Penny Wrout, a former BBC correspondent and producer who is currently a freelance documentary film-maker and multimedia arts producer.
• Paul Anderson, former editor of Tribune and deputy editor of the New Statesman, who now works as a print/online subeditor on the Guardian.
• Dr Fatima el Issawi, an international correspondent with more than 15 years’ experience covering conflict zones for a wide range of broadcast and online outlets including Agence France Press and the BBC.
• Dr Alexandros Antoniou, lecturer in media law and a specialist in communications regulation, intellectual property and cybercrime.

Throughout the course you also have the opportunity to meet visiting lecturers and teachers who are leading figures in different branches of journalism, and who provide an important link to an extended network of industry practitioners.

Our sociology team includes: Professor Mike Roper, Professor Joan Busfield, Dr Michael Halewood, Dr Roisin Ryan-Flood, Dr Linsey McGoey, Professor Pam Cox, Professor Ewa Morawska and Dr Neli Demireva. You may already be familiar with our academics before you meet them in lectures; core A-level texts are written by our team.

Our world-leading academics have their fingers on the pulse of modern society; whether it’s the battle between Apple and Spotify or the exploitation of female bodybuilders, we embed our innovative and sometimes controversial research into your course.

Specialist facilities

As a journalism student at Essex, your material is published on a dedicated website, and you also spend time gaining on-the-job experience with a range of professional news operations, creating and publishing stories and building up a portfolio of published and broadcast work.

You work in a purpose-built newsroom with access to television, radio studios, and computer software that allows journalists to create and edit content across all media and platforms quickly and professionally. The University’s Media Centre is equipped with state-of-the-art studios, cameras, audio and lighting equipment, and an industry-standard editing suite.

You can also gain experience with our Students’ Union media platform Rebel, and benefit from access to our sociology facilities:

• A unique Student Resource Centre where you can get help with your studies, access examples of previous students’ work, and attend workshops on research skills
• The Sociology Common Room is open all day Monday-Friday, is stocked with daily newspapers, magazines and journals, and has free drinks available
• Links with the Institute of Social and Economic Research, which conducts large-scale survey projects and has its own library, and the UK Data Archive, which stores national research data like the British Crime Survey
• Our students’ Sociology Society, a forum for the exchange of ideas, arranging talks by visiting speakers, introducing you to various career pathways, and organising debates
• At Essex, we give you the opportunity to learn a language at no additional cost alongside your degree

Your future

Our BA Journalism and Sociology, will equip you with the skills needed to pursue a number of different careers. You gain the ability to understand the digital society that we live in today and link this to the journalism methods you have studied and how they should be used. You compile an impressive portfolio of published work and complete a detailed multimedia project linked to sociology in your final year, allowing you to offer real evidence of your range and capabilities to future employers.

You become a multi-skilled story-teller, familiar with production techniques in television, radio, online and newspaper journalism, and with the option to gain advanced skills in specific areas in your final year.