Spanish/Social & Public Policy

Spanish is a language spoken by more than 500 million people across Europe, Latin America, and beyond, giving it one of the widest cultural and geographical footprints of any language in the world. Social and public policy, meanwhile, examines how governments respond to social needs, how welfare systems are designed and evaluated, and how political choices shape outcomes in areas such as housing, health, education, and inequality. Combining these two disciplines gives you both the linguistic access to engage with a vast range of policy contexts and the analytical tools to understand how social systems work.

At the University of Glasgow, this five-year full-time programme allows you to develop genuine fluency in Spanish alongside rigorous study of social and public policy. You will work with staff who have expertise across the Spanish-speaking world, covering language, literature, and cultural history alongside the structures and debates of social policy in a comparative perspective. A sandwich year places you in a professional environment for an extended period, and work placement experience is woven throughout the programme, helping you understand how policy ideas translate into practice.

The five-year duration reflects the depth of both the language component and the policy studies.

Graduates are well placed for careers in the civil service, international organisations, development and humanitarian bodies, social research, policy analysis, and NGOs operating in Spanish-speaking regions. Roles in journalism, international business, and diplomacy are also open to those with this combination of language and analytical skills. Postgraduate study in social policy, international development, Latin American studies, and public administration is a natural next step for those who wish to specialise.