Course summary

From understanding how landscapes are shaped, to how populations move and interact, to the impact climate change has on us, the study of geography has never been more relevant. Why Swansea? If you’re particularly focused on enhancing your employability and have a keen interest in human geography and the arts, our BA with a year in industry is an excellent choice that will equip you with highly desirable practical, numerical and computational skills for a wide range of careers. These include regional planning, environmental management, local authority work, financial planning, computing or business and retail management. We are ideally placed to offer exceptional fieldwork opportunities. Just a short drive from the UK’s first designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the Gower Peninsula, you will have easy access to the Brecon Beacons, rural west Wales and the urban and industrial landscapes of South Wales. You’ll also have an opportunity to carry out fieldwork overseas in Austria, Berlin, Malaysian Borneo, Mallorca, New York or Vancouver. Through this degree, you will explore topical issues such as environmental and climatic change, migration and identity, glaciology and ice-sheet dynamics, global environmental modelling and Earth observation, and social theory and urban space. You’ll also get the chance to develop some valuable transferable work skills in your penultimate year of study through an industrial placement. You will be taught in our £4.2m state-of-the-art Science laboratories, in a vibrant and friendly department. You’ll have access to our high-performance computer lab for processing and interpreting satellite earth observation and GIS data, a stable isotope ratio mass spectrometer, a climatic test chamber, mineral magnetic characterisation equipment and an automatic organic carbon analyser. You will learn from internationally renowned academics including Professor Tavi Murray, the first woman to be awarded Polar Medal by HM Queen, Professor Adrian Luckman, who has achieved global media coverage for his climate change research, Professor Peter North, who received international coverage of his work with NASA, and Professor Siwan Davies, whose work focuses on the dramatic changes to our climate. You can change between our BA and BSc schemes up until the end of Year 2. This degree is also offered as a four-year course with a year abroad (L701). “I loved my degree. I was always fascinated in the wonders of the world and what made it tick. Geography helps you look at the world with an analytical eye. It forces you to weigh up evidence and come to conclusions and question the origin of things. Journalism is exactly the same.”

• Melanie Bromley, BA (Hons) Geography, West Coast bureau chief of American Celebrity Magazine US Weekly