Bachelor of Science (BSc)

BSc Fashion Buying and Merchandising

Become a successful fashion buyer by combining creativity and trend-spotting with data analysis, business theory and textile science.

  • Duration: 3 years or 4 years
  • Year of entry: 2025
  • UCAS course code: 6G49 / Institution code: M20
  • Key features:
  • Study abroad
  • Industrial experience
  • Scholarships available
  • Field trips
  • Accredited course

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Fees and funding

Fees

Tuition fees for home students commencing their studies in September 2025 will be £9,535 per annum (subject to Parliamentary approval). Tuition fees for international students will be £38,000 per annum. For general information please see the undergraduate finance pages.

Policy on additional costs

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).

Scholarships/sponsorships

The University of Manchester is committed to attracting and supporting the very best students. We have a focus on nurturing talent and ability and we want to make sure that you have the opportunity to study here, regardless of your financial circumstances. For information about scholarships and bursaries please visit our undergraduate student finance pages and our the Department funding pages .

Course unit details:
Science, Technology and Democracy

Course unit fact file
Unit code UCIL24151
Credit rating 20
Unit level Level 2
Teaching period(s) Semester 1
Available as a free choice unit? Yes

Overview

This course unit will explore:

 

1.       The changing role of the State in science and technology in Western developed societies, taking the UK and the US as core examples, but considering the wider global context.

2.       Key science and technology policy trends such as the pressure to focus resources on priority fields or leading groups/centres, to evaluate and assess the impacts of research and to seek greater commercial exploitation of research results.

3.       The roles scientific expertise - and experts - play in public policy and regulation

4.       Wider issues of ‘science-society’ relationships with implications for governance, such as efforts to improve public engagement with science and technology decision-making; efforts to encourage more responsible research and innovation; and current debates about whether science is ‘broken’: e.g. the replication crisis (are most published scientific findings false?), concerns about fraud and misconduct in science, and the ‘open science’ movement.

 

The issues explored in this course unit are critical to citizenship in a modern science and technology based democracy, yet they rarely surface in any rigorous way in undergraduate science or engineering education.

 

At the same time non-scientists or engineers studying social science or humanities subjects are seldom asked to apply insights from their disciplines to the place of science and technology in modern society.

 

On successful completion of this course unit students, whether from a science or a non-science background, will have demonstrated a raised awareness of the crucial place of science and technology in modern society and of the democracy and governance challenges presented by the evolution of the science-society relationship.
 

Pre/co-requisites

This course is not available to students in Year 1

Aims

Science and technology (S&T) are central to the policies - and the identities - of modern advanced nations such as the UK and USA. Less developed and rapidly developing countries also hope to use S&T to meet their own needs. This course explores how and why S&T have become so important to the State and what the implications are for our societies, our polities, our economies - and for the scientific enterprise itself.
 

Learning outcomes

  • On successful completion students should be able to:

    Show an understanding of how the State became involved in funding science, the changing rationales used to justify that funding, and associated debates

    Show an awareness of the scale and complexity of the 21st Century scientific enterprise and its globally distributed nature

    Show an appreciation of the specificities of science policy and the key challenges that stem from these features

    Show an understanding of the wider role played by science in public policy and regulation, and associated political, economic and ethical debates

    Show an appreciation of key contemporary issues in science/technology–society relations

    Understand the role of interests and ideologies in shaping the positions taken by actors in relation to public policy debates about S&T

    See the ‘bigger’ picture of contemporary S&T and understand how we have come to this position
     

Syllabus

Indicative list of topics:

-                   Why do/should taxpayers fund science?

-                   Growth of ‘Big science’

-                   The global dimensions of science and ‘science diplomacy’

-                   Is science too commercialized?

-                   The politics of science funding

-                   Science and democracy

-                   Science and expertise in public policy and regulation

-                   Science, technology and the public

-                   Is science broken?
 

Teaching and learning methods

Two hours timetabled teaching time per week, as a single 2 hour block (11 weeks).

The use of the two hours per week will be flexible depending on the material to be covered. Teaching is interactive and questions and discussion are encouraged at any time. The Blackboard Virtual Learning Environment is used to supplement face-to-face teaching: a rich array of materials is posted on Blackboard along with links to a variety of further resources.

Science-society debates increasingly happen through social media, and the use of social media (blogs and Twitter) will be encouraged in the course, both as a means of gathering information about current issues/debates and in the sense of encouraging reflection about what the rise of such media may mean for science-society relationships.

In addition to this two hour timetabled activity - this 20 credit course unit version involves a research-based extended essay which will involve at least an additional two one-hour one-to-one or small group supervision meetings during the semester.

 
 
 

Knowledge and understanding

Professional, Analytical and Communication Skills:

    • Undertake research reflexively and responsibly 
    • The ability to analyse and synthesise theoretical and practical information
    • The ability to identify and interrogate the positions taken by actors in debates and discourses around science policy, understanding the interests and motivations that come to play
    • A practical appreciation of how to engage with policy processes
    • The ability to communicate clearly about science and society issues with both specialist (policy makers, scientists, academics) and non-specialist members of the wider public) audiences
     
 

Intellectual skills

  • Recognise, critically evaluate and deploy as appropriate relevant theories and concepts;
  • Understand the role of interests and ideologies in shaping the positions taken by actors in relation to public policy debates about S&T;
  • Undertake research reflexively and responsibly;
  • Engage critically with the research of others, as well as respectfully and constructively;
  • See the 'bigger' picture of contemporary S&T and understand how we have come to this position.

Practical skills

  • Identify and interrogate the positions taken by actors in debates and discourses around science policy, understanding the interests and motivations that come to play;
  • Show some practical appreciation of how to engage with policy processes;
  • Communicate clearly about science and society issues with both a scholarly and a policy/public audience;

 

Transferable skills and personal qualities

  • Oral and written communication skills for specialist and generalist audiences;
  • Ability to analyse and synthesise theoretical and practical information.

Employability skills

Analytical skills
The ability to analyse and synthesise theoretical and practical information
Innovation/creativity
A practical appreciation of how to engage with policy processes
Oral communication
The ability to communicate clearly about science and society issues with both specialist (policy makers, scientists, academics) and non-specialist members of the wider public) audiences
Research
Undertake research reflexively and responsibly
Other
The ability to identify and interrogate the positions taken by actors in debates and discourses around science policy, understanding the interests and motivations that come to play

Assessment methods

Method Weight
Other 20%
Written assignment (inc essay) 30%
Report 50%

1.       2,000 word coursework essay (UCIL 24151 - 30%)

And

2.       A supervised extended essay project (5,000 words) on a science-democracy issue selected by the student with the agreement of the course leader (UCIL 24151 - 50%).

And

Either

3.       A two-page policy brief

Or

A 600-800 word blog post on a current science policy issue (UCIL 24151 - 20%)
 
 

Feedback methods

Formative feedback: in class and via Blackboard on demand (requires participation); on a one-page outline essay plan (on request); on a one-page blogpost/policy-brief plan (on request); and, for UCIL 24151, through at least two face-to-face supervisory meetings with the course leader.


Summative feedback: on all pieces of individual coursework via Blackboard. Additional face-to-face feedback will be available on request.
 

Study hours

Scheduled activity hours
Practical classes & workshops 22
Project supervision 2
Independent study hours
Independent study 176

Teaching staff

Staff member Role
Kieron Flanagan Unit coordinator

Additional notes

This course is not available to students in Year 1.

The course is only open to undergraduate students and is suitable for students from any disciplinary background, whether in science and engineering or management, social sciences and humanities.

These accessible news/comment articles give a good sense of some of the issues discussed in the course:

 

Colin Macilwain, 2010, ‘What science is really worth’, Nature: https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100609/full/465682a.html

 

Adam Huttner-Koros, 2015, ‘The hidden bias of science’s universal language’, The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/08/english-universal-language-science-research/400919/

 

Michael Schulson, 2018, ‘Turning scientists into politicians’, UnDark: https://undark.org/article/314-action-scientists-politicians/

 

Paul Nightingale and Alex Coad, 2014, ‘The Myth of the Science Park Economy’, Demos Quarterly: https://quarterly.demos.co.uk/article/issue-2/innovation-and-growth/

 

‘Trouble at the lab’, The Economist, 19 October 2013: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble

 

Michael Nielsen, 2009, ‘Three myths about scientific peer review’: http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/three-myths-about-scientific-peer-review/

 

Freddie deBoer, 2013, ‘STEM: Still No Shortage: on a myth that just won’t die’, Medium. https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/c6f6eed505c1

 

John Ross, 2018, ‘Gender parity in science ‘generations away’’, Times Higher Education: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/gender-parity-science-generations-away
 

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