Criminology (including foundation year)

On our four-year BA Criminology (including foundation year), we work with you to develop your subject-specific knowledge, and to improve your academic skills. You receive a thorough grounding in these areas during your foundation year (known as Year Zero) to prepare you for a further three years of undergraduate study at Essex.

You are an Essex student from day one, a member of our global community based at the most internationally diverse campus university in the UK.

At Essex, our course will allow you to explore the nature of crime, criminal justice and punishment within wider social contexts. Our flexible course means that you can study an exciting range of topics, from the impact of computer games on crime, to terrorism and illegal migration, to policing and controlling society.

We are a large and friendly department, offering a range and diversity of research interests, with leading international experts in the areas of:

Organised crime, surveillance and counter-terrorism

Environmental harm

Visual criminology

Social history and crime

You'll also receive training in criminological methods – how to design a survey, conduct an interview, and use quantitative analysis from basic statistic to big data – in order to ask the difficult questions.