Film and Television Studies / Mathematics
Combining Film and Television Studies with Mathematics might seem an unlikely pairing, but the two disciplines share a surprising common ground: both ask you to look carefully at structure, pattern, and the systems that underpin complex phenomena. Film and television studies explores how moving images are produced, distributed, and interpreted, drawing on cultural theory, history, and aesthetics to understand why certain stories get told in certain ways. Mathematics, meanwhile, develops the capacity for precise logical reasoning and abstract problem-solving that is useful across virtually every field of human endeavour.
Together, they offer a genuinely broad education at Aberystwyth University, taught by lecturers and researchers working at the forefront of their respective disciplines.
In the film and television strand, you will engage with questions of representation, genre, narrative, and the political economy of screen media. You will analyse how films construct meaning through editing, cinematography, and sound, and consider how television as a cultural form has shaped public life. On the mathematics side, you will develop skills in analysis, algebra, statistics, and mathematical modelling, building a toolkit that is as applicable to data science and finance as it is to theoretical research.
The combination encourages you to move between qualitative and quantitative modes of thinking, which is an increasingly valuable capability in a world saturated with data and media alike.
This three-year, full-time degree suits students who are genuinely curious about both sides of the pairing rather than seeking a single specialism. The discipline of mathematical proof and the discipline of close critical reading turn out to reinforce each other in ways that are not always obvious at the outset. You will likely find that the rigour mathematics demands sharpens your analytical writing, and that the interpretive habits of screen studies make you a more thoughtful communicator of quantitative ideas.
Graduates from joint degrees of this kind are well placed for careers in media analysis, data journalism, market research, educational settings, or any role where analytical skills and cultural literacy are both valued. Some go on to postgraduate study in either discipline, while others enter the creative industries, the civil service, or financial services. The breadth of the degree is its chief asset in a job market that rewards people who can think across boundaries.