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KAREN FOLEY: Welcome back to The Student Hub Live. In this last session of today we're going to take a look at the MA Crime and Justice. And I'm joined by Samantha Fletcher in the studio, who is the deputy module chair for DD804, Crime and Global Justice, which is the second stage of the MA in Crime and Justice. So let's talk briefly then a little bit about this, because students are coming into this particular module at the second stage.
And firstly, you'll have done DD801, which is Principles of Social and Psychological Inquiry, which is the foundation for the three modules-- well, the three qualifications then-- which are the MSc Psychology, MSc Forensic Psychological Sciences, and the MA in Crime and Justice. So there are three brilliant qualifications, all of which stem from that first level module. Now, if you're interested in that particular module, we did that at the last year's showcase. So you can go back on our Student Hub Live YouTube channel and take a look at Casey's account of what's involved in that module.
But very broadly, Principles of Social and Psychological Inquiry is the foundation for everything. It's an open access Masters, which means that anyone can take them if they've got 2.2 in their first degree. And also, the Open University do consider nonstandard applications, for example, if you're coming from abroad, and you've had previous appropriate experience or other undergraduate study that may well be appropriate.
So students coming in then after this first year of study, what sort of skills might they be bringing to their second stage of study?
SAMANTHA FLETCHER: Okey-doke. So in terms of DD801, all students will get a really robust grounding in Social and Psychological Inquiry. And alongside that, they will also very much have started to think about both independent and supportive ways of working, including things like working with their tutors, working with other students and forums, getting to know their peers and how they can work together to support each other. And then, for those that are on the MA in Crime and Justice, they'll be moving forward to DD804-- Crime and Global Justice-- and bringing all that skill set forward to delve further into some criminological inquiry.
KAREN FOLEY: Brilliant. That sounds really exciting. Now, one of the things that did really surprise me was taking a look at some of the things. I spoke to some of your colleagues earlier about the undergraduate offerings in criminology. And they all made complete sense. You know, they were looking at some real key issues and different ways of looking at the world. But here, I see things like environment coming in. And I was surprised because I thought, well, that wouldn't be something really obvious that I would have associated with an MA in Crime and Justice.
SAMANTHA FLETCHER: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I should say I had the privilege of tuning in earlier to see my colleagues on various other sessions, and they've all been fabulous. Absolutely. I mean, the first thing to say is about DD804 is that students will be able to-- so should they come with an interest in kind of more classical notions of crime and criminology, then we will be covering things like prisons and policing and criminal justice systems.
But really, what DD804 is about is making sure that students don't feel confined by those classic and traditional notions alone, and also can bring new life with new perspectives on those classic topics. In particular, I think one of the developments that we've seen in recent times over the past few decades is a real shift in focus towards expanding what criminology is, and thinking about things like, for example, one of my specialisms is regarding crimes of the powerful. Now, they don't always consider crimes in terms of what's deemed legal and illegal. But there are most definitely harmful acts that can be carried out by powerful persons in society.
And I think within that, one of many different things-- so people often think about state crime and corporate crime. One area that's emerged that's of real interest and is covered in the module in block four is green criminology. And not many people have necessarily heard of that outside of those that are studying it.
And green criminology has had a real boost because green criminology thinks and explores harms to the environment, to animals. Often these things are inextricably related-- so harm to the environment can cause harm to humans. We've seen our first refugees of climate change, in terms of people having to move away from rising sea levels. So really, it's all about-- in this module-- it's all about thinking about anything-- any act in the world can be criminalised, decriminalised. It can be made regular or deviant. And if that's the case, there literally isn't anything that doesn't concern criminology.
I know we were talking the other day about the whale that had washed up on the beach with 20 or so plastic bags in the stomach. And, of course, that's something that you might not necessarily think of criminology as a discipline, as a subject matter, would deal with that. But that's exactly the kind of thing that students could look at in DD804.
KAREN FOLEY: Because I guess, the whole thing with plastic bags is that what we were talking earlier in our session about environment and about Blue Planet, really sort of raising awareness of some of those things. But equally, the idea of plastic bags has been around for a long time. I live in Wales, and we have to pay for plastic bags.
And we were talking about this again the other day. Like, I remember when I went to India, and I stopped buying plastic bags because I saw what they did to the cows, for example, let alone anything else. And then now, in Wales I buy Bags for Life. And somehow, for me, because it's a Bag for Life, I feel slightly better off about doing that. I don't always use them in the way that they're intended to, and I'm often forgetting them, et cetera.
But there's different conceptions about what's categorised as what. And, I guess, to what extent society and government are trying to make changes and force things on people-- you can't use all these plastic bags, et cetera. Who is responsible for that? And who is responsible for this poor whale then who washes up on the beach?
SAMANTHA FLETCHER: Absolutely. Well, there's sort of three areas I could say something about there. The first one is I love the fact that you're contextualising your own experience already in just having this discussion. And that's very much something that DD804 offers. It offers students the ability to think about their own lives and contextualise their experiences, and so they can really bring their own experiences to the module in a variety of ways.
And the other thing, of course, is-- and I think this builds upon what Steve and [? Kiera ?] and [? Vicki ?] were talking about earlier-- is about thinking about structural harms and structural crimes, in the sense that criminology historically has been quite-- in the main part-- has been mostly concerned about direct interpersonal forms of, say, violence. Person A hurts person B directly, like, right here, and in the same space, whereas if you think about harm, and you think about things that might be criminal, you can think about things that take place at a real distance. If a corporation puts up its gas prices and a state reduces its pensions, and then a whole load of people die of fuel poverty, is that-- how is that-- where does that fit in terms of thinking about crime and harm? And that's really-- so we need to think about structure. We don't have to necessarily be in the vicinity of somebody directly in order to create a harm.
KAREN FOLEY: And the word global is really important as well in this context. Because whilst we're both talking about very local or contextualised aspects, it's not always quite so clear-cut. Because whilst things can be happening at a local level, there are various influences and global narratives I guess that are going to shape what happens at a local level.
SAMANTHA FLETCHER: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. If you think about it in terms-- there can be events that happen in terms of nuclear disaster. And they have a massive impact on the immediate area. But also, of course, they have impacts further afield. Climate change would be the same example. And the global elements, if I can say, is really, really important to our DD804 module. In particular, what we've done is we've also created a timeline, a map for students. We don't have any pictures of that here today, do we?
KAREN FOLEY: We've got the broad map, which we show the people the picture of the timeline. But the idea here is really important because you've developed something quite interactive.
SAMANTHA FLETCHER: Yeah. So in terms of the actual-- the module is kind of developed in terms of-- it runs in terms of topics. It runs in terms of themes and in terms of the theoretical issues, et cetera. But what we really wanted to do is give students another way of seeing that, in terms of putting it in the context of time and place and space. So what the map offers is it covers all the things that have appeared in the different weeks and the themes and the blocks. But it gives students the ability to revisit that and explore it by date and by location as well.
KAREN FOLEY: So again, a way of looking at things from a variety of different levels and contexts, et cetera. Now, the other thing I was very interested in was looking at the assignments. Because, again, these are not something I would have typically expected. You've got-- so there's six assignments and an end-of-module assessment, which is the dissertation, isn't it?
SAMANTHA FLETCHER: Yes.
KAREN FOLEY: So TMA 3 and 4 are focusing on really, really specific things. And I really like the way that you sort of structured those in terms of the ideas of policy and expert opinion, et cetera. Just tell us very briefly about how some of those assessments work.
SAMANTHA FLETCHER: OK. So in terms of TMA03 and TMA04, what we've been really keen to do is find a balance between very classic kind of academic assignments-- your list reviews, and essays, et cetera-- especially so that students can bring that forward from DD801 or any other experience that they've had. And then, in terms of TMA03 and 4, what we've done is we've asked students to kind of assume the role of experts, to analyse a particular policy of their choosing. There is a wide range of things that they can look at.
And also in TMA04, students are asked to devise a campaign, again, on any matter of their choosing. And they can-- what they'll be doing is bringing forth their academic knowledge and making that accessible to a wider audience. I should say the same thing about the EMA as well, because the EMA is, again, a traditional dissertation in many respects.
But there's a second element as well. And students will be given training and skills in writing blogs and in writing kind of for the modern day, in terms of-- very much these days we're expected to be able to communicate via shorter pieces on social media, and get pieces of information out very quickly, so that will be a quick building of their skills.
KAREN FOLEY: And Steve was speaking very much earlier about the importance of campaigning and the way that the department is actually working very proactively on various campaigns that are of concern.
SAMANTHA FLETCHER: Oh, absolutely. All of the wonderful team that we have on DD804 are all very much involved in kind of active scholarship and bringing that forward into the module. Yeah.
KAREN FOLEY: Brilliant. OK. So we can show the map now-- the crimeline map-- which you were talking about very much earlier. We can't show the close-up of it. But let's just take a look and see, so that students can have a look at some of the things. So here, we can see the various pinpoints. And the idea here is that students will be able to zoom in and out of those areas.
SAMANTHA FLETCHER: Absolutely. The students will be able to-- so you can see the bar across the top. That indicates the different teaching blocks. So they can isolate things by block. So they can go, OK, everything that I learned in block two in those weeks, I'll have a look at them again. But they can also free click and free zoom. And it's a little bit of a shame it's still, because when it's live, it's lovely.
But yeah, so they'll be able to zoom into these things. And then they'll also be able to go in by place, by, say, continent. Yeah. And they'll have that accessible to them as well. So that's really good.
KAREN FOLEY: In the last couple of minutes I just wanted to talk about justice. Because we've been speaking a lot about crime and harm and various sorts of other things in the global aspect. But justice is something that sort of often has connotations of going to prison or having penalties imposed, et cetera. But the way that you conceptualise justice is a lot more broad.
SAMANTHA FLETCHER: Yeah, absolutely. So sort of in the same way that criminology maybe in the past-- and still, to some extent contemporarily, in some cases-- has been kind of confined to certain subject matters, as we've seen an expansion in terms of thinking about harm and thinking about the crimes of the powerful, so have we seen alternatives to justice.
So again, justice is something that we generally tend to think about in terms of formalised criminal justice systems. And students will explore that. They'll explore those formal systems, including some global systems, so international [INAUDIBLE]. But really, what we want the students to think about is about options in terms of justice from the ground up, as opposed to the top down, imposed by governments and states, how grassroots movements, campaign groups, can give their version of justice.
And also, we're very much-- within this module we are keen to make sure that we recognise that certain voices, particularly of powerful, privileged people in society, get heard more. So in this module we're very keen to explore all the other voices that maybe, because of lack of privilege-- for want of a better expression-- aren't in the forefront. And so students will be able to, for example, look at anti [INAUDIBLE] perspectives, particularly from the black minority ethnic groups who have challenged the idea of prisons as a form of justice and come up with some absolutely fantastic alternatives.
KAREN FOLEY: Brilliant. We've just got room for one last thing to say. And I know that we planned on covering so much, which I think we actually have. But is there anything else that you think is really important for students to take away from today's session?
SAMANTHA FLETCHER: Take away from today's session-- for me, it's really that notion of making sure that students are aware that criminology is-- it's because criminology, the word, has that crime in it. It still persists that people think criminology is about crime, as in what's illegal-- illegal and legal. And it's just simply not the case.
And I think, especially when you go on to do any form of education and study, you can go in with one idea and emerge with another of what you really want to do for a career, et cetera. And criminology allows you to do that. It allows you to grow with your study. And particularly, that's something that was really important to our design of DD804-- so a fabulous amount of flexibility and potentials for the future.
KAREN FOLEY: Brilliant. Well, Sam, thank you so much--
SAMANTHA FLETCHER: Thank you for having me.
KAREN FOLEY: --telling us about it. That's been really interesting. I hope you've enjoyed that session. It's all we've got time for today. But I hope that you've learned a lot about some of the modules, qualifications, and concerns from the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences here at The Open University.
HJ and Damon, thank you so much for being wonderful today and for engaging with all the chat with everybody back at home. How have you found today's programme?
DAMON: It's been good. We've covered an enormous range of subjects, and people have been fabulous on the online-- in the discussions, raised some really interesting points. And hopefully, they'll all come on and enrol onto the modules and onto the MAs.
HJ: Yes. So we've got all the links for those on the website-- StudentHub.open.ac.uk. So just have a look at the resources page. And if you have any questions that you think about later or didn't put in the chat or we didn't get to answer, just email us-- studenthub@open.ac.uk, and we'd love to get back to you. But stay in touch using our website, signing up to the newsletter or Twitter--@studenthublive. And we're just looking forward to chatting at the next one, I think.
DAMON: Yeah. Absolutely.
KAREN FOLEY: Brilliant. Well, thank you very much, both. And thank you everyone at home. You had some brilliant ideas, brilliant tips that you've shared. If you'd like to see more from the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences or more from us at The Student Hub on a range of skills as you prepare for your study starting again in September, October, then you can check out The Student Hub Live YouTube channel, and you can subscribe. Or you can search for various things and find out more about the specific modules.
We'll also have the catch-up available from today very shortly. We've covered undergraduate criminology, economics, music, religious studies, classics, environment, and society. And from postgraduate we've covered the MA Philosophy and the MA in Crime and Justice. So do check those out if you haven't managed to catch up on all of them today.
We've got a Student Hub Live writing retreat over the summer which is in Adobe Connect, and that will cover a range of different things. So if you're interested in things like blogging, for example, we're going to be showing you how to do those and how to enhance your writing and think about different styles, so that you can really work on building up your skills and repertoire. All the details for that are on the Student Hub Live website, where you can find out more about our other events that we've got planned for you also.
I hope you've enjoyed today's session. If you'd like to send us an email letting us know what you thought of the show-- StudentHub@open.ac.uk. There's a feedback button, also. And don't forget that the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences have a fantastic Facebook page. So you can keep in touch over the summer with the various things that are on offer, meet the academics, et cetera, and find out more.
That's been all from us today. Thank you for watching. I hope you've enjoyed. And we'll see you at another event very soon. Bye for now.
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