Marine Ecosystems and Governance MRes

Please rest assured we make all reasonable efforts to provide you with the programmes, services and facilities described. However, it may be necessary to make changes due to significant disruption, for example in response to Covid-19.

View our Academic experience page, which gives information about your Newcastle University study experience for the academic year 2023-24.

See our terms and conditions and student complaints information, which gives details of circumstances that may lead to changes to programmes, modules or University services.

Module information is intended to provide an example of what you will study.

Our teaching is informed by research. Course content changes periodically to reflect developments in the discipline, the requirements of external bodies and partners, and student feedback.

Full details of the modules on offer will be published through the Programme Regulations and Specifications ahead of each academic year. This usually happens in May.

Optional modules availability

Some courses have optional modules. Student demand for optional modules may affect availability.

To find out more please see our terms and conditions.

Three taught modules worth 60 credits are delivered in week blocks during semester one. A research project worth 120 credits is undertaken across semesters 2 and 3.

The course is delivered by the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences.

Depending on your modules, you'll be assessed through a combination of:

• Essay
• Professional skills assessments
• Oral presentation
• Report
• Research proposal
• Research paper

You'll develop your research skills by designing and completing a supervised project.

Major sites for projects include the:

• Arctic
• Maldives
• Bahamas
• Northumberland coast (UK)

The project will help you to develop knowledge in your chosen research topic by drawing on the research communities within the:

• Ecology Research Group
• School of Natural and Environmental Sciences

You can design your research project, producing a research proposal upon application.

Topics can be highly varied to suit your interests. However, there are a few project ideas to choose from below, developed by staff working on existing larger research projects:

• Assessing Metal Concentrations in Deep-Sea Organisms (PDF: 270KB)
• Examining Channichthyidae around the sub-Antarctic Island of South Georgia (PDF: 345KB)
• Examining Gobionotothen Gibberifrons around the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia (PDF: 243KB)
• Fisheries Aggregation Devices - Collection of shore crab for use as bait physical, biological and chemical impacts (PDF: 552KB)
• Dredging up the Past – Assessing Current Scallop Dredging Impacts in Northumberland & Tracking Recovery from Historic Fishing Effort (PDF:267)
• Effects of Trawling and Potting on Benthic Communities – Indicator Species Detection and Biological Traits Analysis (PDF:242kb)

Our mission is to help you:

• stay healthy, positive and feeling well
• overcome any challenges you may face during your degree – academic or personal
• get the most out of your postgraduate research experience
• carry out admin and activities essential to progressing through your degree
• understand postgraduate research processes, standards and rules

We can offer you tailored wellbeing support, courses and activities.

You can also access a broad range of workshops covering:

• research and professional skills
• careers support
• wellbeing
• health and safety
• public engagement
• academic development

Our staff have over 30 years of research and teaching experience, both in the UK and overseas. Their expertise spans the natural and social sciences in coastal-marine science and management.

The Ecology Research Group was formed in 2017, and comprises:

• 21 academics
• 12 post-docs
• a large cohort of postgraduate research students

We work across the spectrum, from fundamental ecological science to application and translation into management and policy. We are interdisciplinary, applied, and, in some cases, develop cutting-edge technology. This includes work in complexity science and environmental genomics. We collaborate with colleagues from across the University, nationally and internationally and our work has societal impacts.

This research group has had notable successes in their work on:

• coral reefs (Professor John Bythell, Professor Alasdair Edwards, Professor Nicholas Polunin)
• physical oceanography and climate modelling (Professor Andrew Willmott, Dr Miguel Maqueda)
• marine spatial mapping and systems planning (Dr Clare Fitzsimmons)
• marine protected areas and management (Professor Nicholas Polunin)
• food webs (Professor Nicholas Polunin)

They are also active in:

• marine mammal monitoring (Dr Per Berggren)
• citizen science and outreach (Dr Jane Delaney)
• deep sea ecology and marine time series (Dr Ben Wigham)

From 1 January 2021 there is an update to the way professional qualifications are recognised by countries outside of the UK

Check the government’s website for more information.

If your studies last longer than one year, your tuition fee may increase in line with inflation.

Depending on your residency history, if you’re a student from the EU, other EEA or a Swiss national, with settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, you’ll normally pay the ‘Home’ tuition fee rate and may be eligible for Student Finance England support.

EU students without settled or pre-settled status will normally be charged fees at the ‘International’ rate and will not be eligible for Student Finance England support.

If you are unsure of your fee status, check out the latest guidance here.

Scholarships

We support our EU and international students by providing a generous range of Vice-Chancellor's automatic and merit-based scholarships. See our searchable postgraduate funding page for more information. 

If you are an international student or a student from the EU, EEA or Switzerland and you need a visa to study in the UK, you may have to pay a deposit.

You can check this in the How to apply section.

If you're applying for funding, always check the funding application deadline. This deadline may be earlier than the application deadline for your course.

For some funding schemes, you need to have received an offer of a place on a course before you can apply for the funding.