Sociology and Criminology are two distinct disciplines that when combined provide insights into the nature of social deviance, and this Joint Honours programme gives students an exciting opportunity to explore the inter-relationships between the two subjects.Sociology offers a core social science perspective which can both enhance and draw on insights from Criminology. Sociology’s theoretically-driven, macro focus on social structures, institutions and group actors offers a way of locating applied criminological topics in their social context. In addition, the ‘micro’ aspects of the sociological tradition (a distinctive feature of the programme that we offer here at Birmingham) have been a longstanding influence upon criminology research.Criminology is the study of ‘crime’ and its causes, as well as providing ways to understand social responses to crime. It offers distinctive insights into the nature of social non-conformity, ‘harm’ and ‘control’ that challenge and energise traditional sociological approaches to topics such as stratification, integration, conflict and inequality. Students joining this programme have an exciting opportunity to develop not just an understanding of both fields of study in their own right, but also, perhaps more crucially, an understanding of the relationships and conflicts generated by these respective fields.