MA/PGDip Gender, Sexuality and Culture

Fees for entry in 2026 have not yet been set. For reference, the fees for the academic year beginning September 2025 were as follows:

• MA (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £13,000
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £27,000
• MA (part-time)
  UK students (per annum): £6,500
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £13,500
• PGDip (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £8,667
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £18,000
• PGDip (part-time)
  UK students (per annum): £4,333
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £9,000

Further information for EU students can be found on our dedicated EU page.

The fees quoted above will be fully inclusive for the course tuition, administration and computational costs during your studies.

All fees for entry will be subject to yearly review and incremental rises per annum are also likely over the duration of courses lasting more than a year for UK/EU students (fees are typically fixed for International students, for the course duration at the year of entry). For general fees information please visit: postgraduate fees . Always contact the department if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

Self-funded international applicants for this course will be required to pay a deposit of £1000 towards their tuition fees before a confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) is issued. This deposit will only be refunded if immigration permission is refused. We will notify you about how and when to make this payment.

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

• Information on university funding, loans, and scholarships available on the Masters student funding page
• The Faculty of Humanities offered a range of scholarship opportunities for eligible applicants starting in September 2025. Please check back to confirm availability for September 2026 start.
• Please visit the school funding page for more information on subject funding available
• Other funding for EU and international students is on our country-specific pages

Precise content of the course is reviewed regularly, but you'll get a good sense of topic coverage from a recent list of lecture titles:

• Introducing the Sociology of Consumption: Theory, themes & controversies 
• Differentiating consumer societies: History, gender, race 
• "One Dimensional Man"? Mass culture, materialism and well-being 
• Consumer culture, cultural theory and the meaning of signs 
• Consumption, class, taste 
• Political economy, globalisation and transformation
• Sustainable consumption? Consumers and the environment 
• Will consumers save the world? Resistance, movements and alternatives 
• A sociology of things: Material culture, consumption and the digital
   

This course examines consumption from a sociological perspective. It aims to equip students with the understanding and ability to analyse consumption in relation to a range of processes. They include the dynamics and social differences of consumer societies; cultural consumption, subcultures and the culture 'industry'; globalisation, privatisation and economic change; sustainability consumer activism and movements; and material culture.

In relation to these processes, we ask a range of questions. What is consumer culture, where did it come from, and how does it vary? How are forms of social difference around, for example, gender, race and class, challenged or reproduced in consumption? What do critiques of consumption from critical theory and environmental activists tell us? How do privatisation, colonialism, digitisation, and global commodity chains affect consumption? Can we resist or change the world with subcultures or consumer movements? And what are the stories and lives of commodities and objects themselves, can we say that things have agency?

Throughout, the course aims to develop students' capacity for critical thinking, sociological imagination and synthesis at an advanced level, through the application of diverse conceptual approaches to a range of empirical cases and contexts.

 

On completion of the whole course, and based on their active participation in and outside of classes, students will be expected to: 

• Understand the sociological dynamics of everyday economic activity 
• Understand and be critically engaged with contemporary debates about identity, inequalities, politics, and the environment as they relate to consumption 
• Understand the strengths and weaknesses of current work in the field 

Weekly lecture

3000 word essay (100%)

250-500 word formative assignment (0%)