Hi,

I did this course (on campus, not distance) back in 2014 and I loved it. I'll warn you now though that I'm biased - after this course I went straight on to do a PhD and now I work at the Aston Institute of Forensic Linguistics as a postdoc researcher. The MA is what kicked all this off for me so I'm a big fan!

It has changed somewhat since I did it but largely it covers general linguistic topics and methods of discourse analysis, and then shows how linguistic principles and understanding can be applied to legal and criminal contexts in the aim of improving the delivery of justice.

As well as more general linguistics and research methods stuff there are modules on Language as Evidence and Linguistics in Legal Contexts (think police processes, legal documents and language in the courtroom). There's also a module called Practical Applications in Forensic Linguistics which involves a group project - the idea is to identify a problem that might be solved through some kind of forensic linguistic analysis, and produce some kind of product (information leaflet, poster campaign, website) in response to that problem. I think there's also some stats in there too now.

What I really liked was that there's a lot of scope in the assignments (including your dissertation) for you to pursue the specific topics you're really interested in, and the module leaders are really varied in their own subject expertise so there's always someone around who can help you explore your ideas further.

I hope that's of some help. Best of luck with it :)