Geography, BA (Hons), with study abroad

Geography plays a vital role in understanding landscape formation, population dynamics, and the effects of climate change, making it increasingly pertinent today. Swansea University's Geography degrees develop essential practical, numerical, and computational skills for careers in regional planning, environmental management, finance, and more. Strong industry ties offer valuable work experience, while fieldwork opportunities abound in nearby areas like the Gower Peninsula and international destinations such as Austria or New York. Students explore key issues including environmental change, migration, and glaciology, with access to state-of-the-art facilities like high-performance labs and advanced equipment. A year abroad or in industry enhances cultural and professional growth.The program includes compulsory and optional modules across years, covering topics from global environmental change to urban modelling and geographic information systems. Assessment involves lectures, seminars, fieldwork, exams, coursework, and a final-year dissertation, ensuring a comprehensive learning experience.

In Year 1 you'll study several compulsory modules covering topics such as global environmental change, people place and nation, global shifts and sustainability. You will then choose from optional modules covering geographical skills and methods, writing skills and personal development planning and practical field projects, and topics such as mobilities and migration, urban geography and geology. In Year 2, you'll choose from a range of optional modules covering data analysis, approaches to human and physical geography, and conducting social and environmental research. You'll study topics such as geographic information systems, glacial environments and processes, creative geographies, quaternary environmental change, regional economic development and policy, boundaries and connections, global vegetation patterns and dynamics, political geographies, urban modelling and geological record of past environments. You'll also have an opportunity to take part in an overseas field trip. In Year 3, you'll spend a year abroad at one of our partner institutions experiencing a different culture. In Year 4, you'll undertake your dissertation and choose from a range of optional modules covering topics such as migration, security and humanism, contemporary rural Britain, geographies of national identity, glaciology, humid tropical environments and landscapes, meteorology and atmospheric science, plate tectonics and global geophysics, World cities, environmental modelling and the climate of the last 1,000 years.