Film & Visual Culture and Philosophy & Ethics

Film and visual culture and philosophy and ethics is a combination that invites you to analyse the moving image at two levels simultaneously: as a formal and cultural phenomenon, asking how films and visual media work and what they mean, and as an ethical and philosophical one, asking what values they embody, what moral questions they raise, and how visual culture connects to the deepest questions about how we should live and what we owe each other. Both disciplines reward careful attention and rigorous argument, and they complement each other in important ways.

At Liverpool Hope, this three-year programme explores film, photography, and animation through both practice and theory, giving you the opportunity to work creatively with visual media while also developing critical and analytical frameworks for understanding it. The philosophy and ethics strand introduces you to the major traditions of ethical thought, metaethics, and applied ethical questions, developing the capacity for careful moral reasoning that is valuable in any field where questions of value and responsibility arise. A sandwich year in industry and a work placement are built in, giving you professional experience in relevant creative or analytical contexts, and a year abroad broadens your cultural perspective on both visual culture and ethical questions.

Graduates from this combination find careers in the creative industries, including film production, media, content creation, and arts administration, as well as in roles in journalism, communications, cultural policy, and education. The philosophy strand is particularly valuable in careers that require ethical reasoning, including work in technology companies grappling with AI ethics, policy organisations, and healthcare ethics consultation. Many graduates continue to postgraduate study in film, philosophy, media, or cultural studies.

The combination is suited to students who want both a creative and an intellectually rigorous degree.