MA Criminology

Fees for entry in 2027 have not yet been set. For reference, the fees for the academic year beginning September 2026 were as follows:

• MA (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £14,700
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £28,900

The fees quoted above are fully inclusive of tuition, administration and computational costs.

Fees for entry are subject to yearly review. The University reserves the right to increase your tuition fee by up to 7% each year for courses lasting more than one year, including to reflect rising costs associated with delivering our educational and wider student experience. Postgraduate fees information .

Always contact the admissions team if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

International student CAS deposit

Self-funded international applicants are required to pay a deposit of £2500 towards their tuition fees before a confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) is issued. Some applicants will be required to pay a higher deposit. More information on tuition fee deposits .

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).

We know that student finance can be complicated. The links below provide further information to help guide you.

• Learn more about - student finance options for UK students .
• Learn more about - fees and finance for international students .
• Graduates of The University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University can receive a 10% discount on their master's degree tuition fees as part of our Manchester Alumni Loyalty Discount scheme.

The course provides a theoretically-contextualised and practically-oriented introduction to the use of geographic information systems for crime analysis and research using R and R Studio. It combines the study of a subject area (crime and place) with the development of spatial visualisation and analysis skills. The course will be of interest to students with a particular interest in learning GIS for the study of a variety of social or public health phenomena. The course responds to current calls from ESRC and the British Academy to improve the quantitative skills of social science graduates and fits within the Q-Step Manchester initiative.

Indicative content:

1. Introduction to the course; 
2. Producing your first crime map; 
3. Working with spatial data; 
4. Thematic maps; 
5. Mapping crime 'hot spots'; 
6. Hot spots in context; 
7. Global/local spatial autocorrelation; 
8. Regression & challenges of autocorrelation; 
9. Basic spatial regression models; 
10. Course review.

Pre-requisites: The course assumes the student has already taken an introductory data analysis course using appropriate software such as SPSS, STATA or R such as Modelling Criminological Data, Making Sense of Criminological Data, or Data Analysis with R and R Studio, or the equivalent in other Departments across SOSS. In case of doubt about whether you meet this criteria do not hesitate to contact the Course Unit Director.

The unit aims to:

1. Enhance students' understanding of criminological theory in context with particular forms of violence; 
2. Develop students' awareness of the links between approaches to research, theory construction and policy surrounding violence; 
3. Explore the complex relationships between power, inequality and violence, drawing upon examples such as ethnicity and gender; 
4. Examine knowledge and understanding of various forms of violence through critical discussion of empirical research and theory.

On completion of the course, the student will be able to: 

1. Identify main research traditions in the study of crime and place; 
2. Recognise key concepts on spatial data visualisation and analysis; 
3. Produce maps of crime and other social features in a professional manner; 
4. Carry out exploratory spatial data analysis of both points and area data; 
5. Produce hot spots maps using various approaches; 
6. Model spatial area data using regression. 

Teaching and learning across course units consists of: 

1. Preparatory work to be completed prior to teaching sessions, including readings, pre-recorded subject material and online activities; 
2. A weekly whole-class lecture or workshop; 
3. Tutorials;
4. One-to-one support via subject specific office hours.

Employability skills: In addition to subject-specific knowledge and understanding, Criminology units foster highly employable skills such as the ability to (i) analyse, critique and (re-)formulate a problem or issue; (ii) rapidly and thoroughly review/rate argument and evidence from targeted bibliographic searches; (iii) plan, structure and present arguments in a variety of written formats and to a strict word limit, (iv) express ideas verbally and organise work effectively in small teams for a variety of written and oral tasks; (v) obtain, manipulate and (re-)present different forms of data; (vi) manage time effectively; (vii) reflect on and improve performance through feedback.

The course is assessed by means of homework (20%) and a learning portfolio (80%). You will have weekly homework tasks, which will be assessed by online quizzes designed to consolidate your practical and theoretical learning. Then you will need to submit a learning portfolio (3000 words). As part of it, you will have to attach a selection of maps and analysis. 

Formative feedback (both individual and collective) will be given on on tasks and contribution in class. Summative feedback will be given on both assessed components via Blackboard (Grademark).

We won’t require you to purchase a textbook for this course unit. Instead we will rely on reading material that is available for free or that can be obtained from the library in digital format. The main required text we will be following is: ‘Crime Mapping and Analysis using R: a Practical Introduction’ by Reka Solymosi and Juanjo Medina, available online.

Across their course units each semester, full-time students are expected to devote a ‘working week’ of 35-40 hours to study. Accordingly each course unit demands 9-10 hours of study per week consisting of (i) teacher-led activities and sessions, (ii) preparation, required and further reading.

Part-time students study the same number of weekly hours per unit but take fewer units per semester.