Department of Sport & Exercise Sciences | BA Sport, Exercise and Physical Activity (with Foundation Year)

BA Sport, Exercise & Physical Activity (with Foundation Year) at Durham University

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Develop intellectual, practical and employability skills as you explore new perspectives on social issues in, and the social impact of, sport and physical activity.

Do you have a passion for sport and a concern for social issues within sport and exercise? Are you keen to play a part in reducing inequalities, promoting social justice, and improving health and wellbeing through sport, exercise and physical activity?

On the BA Sport, Exercise & Physical Activity course you will explore a wide range of topics from grassroots to high performance sport, as well as other forms of physical activity. You’ll also investigate some of the connections between sport and physical activity with issues such as discrimination and inequalities, the environment, sedentary lifestyles, and obesity.

The core and optional modules, developed by an academic team involved in leading-edge research, centre on the key academic disciplines of Sport Sociology, Sport Policy and Sports Development. The curriculum offers the flexibility to select modules from other sport and exercise sciences, including: Physiology, Psychology, Physical Activity, Nutrition & Health. These modules have been carefully designed to enhance your research and academic study skills, and the final-year dissertation is an opportunity to engage in deeper investigation of a sport, exercise or physical activity topic that particularly interests you.

With an emphasis on employability, there are opportunities for you to develop your transferable skill set and take a placement module in a sport or exercise vocational setting, as well as 'open modules' from other departments. You also have the choice of applying to add an industry placement year or a study year abroad to your degree, increasing the course from three years to four.

Our approach to learning, teaching and assessment emphasises the application of academic knowledge to real-life examples, practices and professional settings in sport, exercise and physical activity. This enables you to develop your intellectual capacities and personal qualities, while acquiring a broad range of practical, professional and employability skills that can be applied to a range of careers across the sport and exercise industries and beyond.

We have an excellent graduate employment record. The quality of our degree courses is reinforced by employers who have identified Durham as a World Top 100 source of the most competent, innovative, effective graduates.

Our students progress into a wide range of careers in the field of sport and health and beyond. They have taken up roles in elite sport, sport management and sport development, including management roles in the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Others lead development projects for local councils and major charities, and have taken up roles with sporting organisations like Sport England, English Cricket Board and Williams F1. We also have graduates working in media roles with organisations such as Sky Sports, BBC Sport and British Eurosport, as well as in health promotion and clinical settings.

Some graduates have progressed to roles outside of the sporting world, and work in banking and finance, business, management, public relations, human resources and the armed forces.

Sport degrees also act as a springboard to postgraduate study, and a number of our graduates have continued to PGCE or Master’s level study, leading to careers in fields including teaching and physiotherapy.

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