A Placement Year is an opportunity for you to spend a year gaining valuable work experience during your time at University.
Degree-with-Placement programmes in Archaeology at Durham offer the chance to build a 9-12 month paid professional placement into your degree. Placements can be arranged in varied employment sectors, but as a Department, we offer a unique chance annually for up to six students to work with our own commercial archaeology company.
Placements with our commercial archaeology company, Durham University Archaeological Services, provide a paid introduction to the commercial archaeology sector combined with training in a variety of professional skills. You will gain experience in the field excavating as well as working on lab and desk-based tasks, giving a broad knowledge of the work involved in working for a commercial archaeology unit. At the end of the placement, the skills you have developed will make it much easier to find work at higher levels within commercial archaeology.
Students in the following degree programmes in 2020/21 can apply for a Placement Year:
It is also usually possible to transfer to the placement year variant of our programmes from the equivalent programme without placement year.
During your placement you will remain a student at Durham University but with reduced tuition fees (20% of what you'd usually pay).