Criminology
Through research-led teaching delivered by experts with real-world experience, you’ll learn about topical contemporary issues and important historical debates surrounding crime causation, crime control and regulation of behaviour. Our interdisciplinary approach and strong links to wider criminal justice professions mean you’ll develop a deeper understanding of the interactions between politics, criminology and criminal justice. You will learn about the impact of public policy in these areas and gain a broad understanding of wider contextual issues, graduating with relevant skills that can be applied across several dynamic professions.
Unique Research
Discover unique research on emerging criminological frontiers like cybercrime, food crime, modern slavery, predictive policing, and genocide.
Make a difference
Learn the intellectual, critical and analytical skills needed to apply criminological concepts in practice.
Outstanding teaching
Learn from leading experts and researchers with outstanding reputations.
Cross-disciplinary
Join an interdisciplinary department with specialisms across sociology, psychology, and law.
Graduate Destinations
Our Criminology degrees allow you to develop a variety of highly transferable skills, including analytical, research, problem-solving and communication skills, which are in high demand for a wide variety of different roles. Our graduates go on to work for local or central government and criminal justice agencies, in NGOs, and in pressure groups and think tanks, amongst other exciting career paths. Another popular route is academia and research at Manchester or at another top university.
Top job sectors*
*Information based on graduate data across all postgraduate Criminology programmes, 2017-2021.
Further / Higher education
Government Administration
Medicine / Healthcare
Local / National Govt.
Advertising / Marketing
Law / Legal Services
Example job titles
- Child Protection Officer
- Mental Health Advocate
- Social Worker
- Academic Project Lead
- Intelligence Analyst
- Policy Officer
Example employers
- Manchester City Council
- Suffolk County Council
- Relate
- Mills & Reeve LLP
- The University of Manchester
- Virginia Commonwealth University
Madeleine’s Manchester
Madeleine, from the UK, studied Criminology MA at Manchester. Here she talks about choosing the course, her student experience, and what her plans are for the future.
On studying your course
I knew that I was keen on choosing a new subject that I haven’t previously studied at school – courses like English and History, although they interest me, just didn’t appeal to me and I wanted to try something new. Loving crime documentaries and having an interest in the justice system, led me to choose Criminology at both undergraduate and postgraduate
On your student experience
Having now studied it at university, I now know for sure that I want to work in the field, and more specifically, alongside ex- offenders or prisoners, which I had no idea that I wanted to do prior to university.
Meet the Academics
Manchester has a variety of outstanding Criminology experts who advise and assist our students' academic progress.
Professor David Gadd
Professor in Criminology
David Gadd completed his MPhil at Cambridge University and his PhD from Keele University.He is best known for his narrative studies of offenders, including his research on domestic abuse perpetrators, hate crime perpetrators and people traffickers. David teaches crime theory in the criminology programmes. His work is characterized by a distinctively psychosocial approach to criminology that explores the dynamics between the subjective worlds of people who have sometimes committed serious crimes and the social and cultural aspects of their lives.
"I have long been interested in the question of why some people perpetrate abuses that many of us would regard as unthinkable, and think it is critical that criminologists and their students are equipped with the skills needed to engage with the discourses of blame that discourage attempts at understanding within the criminal justice system."
Dr Olga Sanchez De Ribera
Lecturer in Criminology
Olga, a PhD holder from the Institute of Criminology (University of Cambridge), joined the University in 2021. She previously worked as a posdoc at the Universidad de la Republica (Uruguay) and as a consultant for the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB). Her research interests include neurocriminology, program evaluation, risk assessment, systematic reviews, and violent offenders.
"I teach a new course on prisons, providing critical knowledge of empirical and policy discussions about prisons and rehabilitation programs. The course takes a multidisciplinary approach, offering weekly workshops on research, policy, and practice."
Prof Julia Buxton
British Academy Global Professor
Julia is British Academy Global Professor, with a four-year award for research on changing patterns of drug supply and the impact of decriminalisation and legalisation initiatives on the quality of drug policy making, stakeholder inclusion and reduction of drug related harms.
"I came to drug policy research through disparate personal, academic and research experiences. Observable negative outcomes ranging from lack of access to medical morphine in palliative care, displacement of Colombian refugees in Venezuela, and violence in the areas of Manchester and London where I had lived or was living all configured around the criminalisation and policing of drugs and drug ‘wars’."
Faculty of Humanities
The University of Manchester