Studying our Community Studies and Housing BA (Hons) course will equip you with in-depth knowledge and skills around housing policy alongside rural and urban communities. In core areas of study, you will be given an Introduction to Community Studies to understand key debates, concepts and theories in the field and how to apply these to real-world situations to bring about positive social change. Furthermore, you will be introduced to the theory, skills and tools to identify and design areas for social action in response to global challenges in our Social Change with Communities: The UN Sustainable Development Goals unit. At the same time, you will tailor to the needs and interests of the community in Luton as well as student communities and identify areas in your community where you hope to see social change and social environmental justice occur. As an opportunity for you to apply practical skills, our Community Studies and Housing: Work-Based Learning and Career Development unit will allow you to engage with a variety of sectors in community studies and housing to be able to promote people’s health, happiness and wellbeing.

You will learn to meet the needs of service users or customers with a focus on equality, diversity, fairness, social justice and respect. Similarly, you will engage in the planning, design and reinvention of the public spaces at the heart of every community in our Community Studies and Housing: Work Based Learning and Career Planning unit. This links to our Community Studies in Action unit where you will be encouraged to understand and analyse practices that foster equal relationships between institutions and communities. Moreover, you will explore the relationship between work, welfare and our daily lives including areas of health and social care, education, housing and pensions in our Work and Welfare in the 21st Century unit. You will then gain an advanced knowledge of working in community-based or housing settings and learn to take a more active role within them in our Community Studies and Housing: Work Based Learning and Graduate Employability unit. Here, you will take personal responsibility for making change happen while actively problem solving to overcome obstacles and achieve results.

Aside from this, our unit in Housing Policy and Practice will allow you to consider different approaches to housing policy from the point of differing politics, ideologies, needs and expectations from government and local policy perspectives. With a global perspective, you will also consider the nature of International Built Environments and how it shapes the wellbeing and welfare of communities in different places. You will also be familiarised with ethnographic mapping that will allow you to make social and spatial practices visual and tangible in our Ways of Walking unit. To equip you with the research skills in the field of social sciences, you will explore debates and theories in social research, identify quantitative and qualitative data research methods, and learn to interpret and analyse this data across different levels of your study with our units in an Introduction to Research and Social Enquiry, Research Methods 1: Collecting Data and Research Methods 2: Exploring Data. Finally, you will complete a Capstone Project – Community Studies and Housing Degree that will give you the opportunity to present a workable project drawing from your work experience and produce a piece of research in a specific area of community studies and housing.