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Core modules:

Researching History

This core module equips you to research history at an advanced level: it supports your development as you progress to postgraduate study, where you will exercise greater independence as a researcher. The sessions will engage with fundamental questions about the nature of our discipline, how it has changed, and where it is going next. We'll also consider what tools and strategies we have to identify and interpret historical evidence, and how we can communicate our findings and arguments to the academic community. 

Seminars will bring together students with diverse historical interests, and you'll be asked to identify examples from your own research specialism for discussion in class. In addition to the seminars, there are workshops run by the Arts and Humanities Faculty Digital Learning Team, and you will be asked to explore our research culture by attending a research event of your choice during this first semester. This could be one of our History Research Seminars, or an event run by one of our research centres.

15 credits

Digital History

This module will introduce you to the field of digital history. You will explore the methods through which digital history is carried out and the impact it has had on the wider discipline of history. You will critically reflect on the key theories that underpin digital history and examine existing digital history projects in detail, before getting the chance to put digital historical methods into practice yourself.

Throughout the module, you will investigate the development of digital history as a discipline and explore the processes through which history is made digital. These include the digitisation of historical sources, the creation of digital archives and the transformation of traditional sources into structured digital data. You will get the chance to explore ways in which this data can be examined, including distant reading, digital mapping, digital prosopography, social network analysis and data visualisation. You will be encouraged to analyse these methods critically, assessing their strengths and limitations and exploring their capacity to uncover patterns of historical change. You will discuss and debate how methods are applied and the kinds of research they facilitate, and will also get the opportunity to try key methods out in practice using digital research tools and sample data.

As you move through the course, you will be asked to reflect on ways in which digital methods can be used as public-facing tools, both to recreate historical environments using techniques such as VR and AR, and as a means of disseminating the results of research in accessible ways.

You will be asked to critically examine how digital technologies have reshaped the discipline of history - including their impact on accessibility, inequality and bias - in both positive and negative ways.

To facilitate the combination of practical application and theoretical reflection, you will be provided with a set of digital history projects which will act as ongoing case studies throughout the course. These will cover a wide range of historical source types and periods. You will use these case studies as a means to explore the methods covered in the module, as well as sources of historical data for your own assignments.

You will leave the module not just with an appreciation of how digital methods can be used to facilitate historical research, but also a set of transferable digital skills applicable in a range of academic and non-academic settings.

This module does not assume any previous knowledge or experience with digital tools.

15 credits

Plus the below:
- Pitching Your Project
- Dissertation/research project module

Community and Power: urban life, ca. 300-1800

Urban settlements have existed for millenia. This module uses these environments to ask questions of the period ca. 300 CE-ca. 1800 CE, and as a lens into key historical interpretations of that period. What was life like in medieval and early modern towns and cities, and what were their political, social, and economical structures? Cities and towns also present a complex picture of pre-modern life: alongside stories of successful, bustling trade centres or political and cultural capitals, they were also sites of deprivation, segregation, enslavement, and violence.  How did people live, love, work and worship within these spaces? From the last days of imperial Rome, with its 1 million inhabitants, to the emergence of Rome, Jerusalem and Mecca as holy sites, the growing commercial centres including London, Venice, and the Baltic cities, and the indigenous and colonial settlements in the Americas and Africa, these towns and cities showcase the variety and breadth of social, cultural, and political life in the pre-modern world. In addition to introducing you to individual towns and cities of the period and key debates in pre-modern history, this module will challenge your understanding of periodisation, asking how we can - and whether we should - distinguish between different periods before modernity.  It will also provide a bridge to Masters-level study in the first semester, developing critical Masters-level skills such as primary source analysis and your ability to understand, deploy, critique, and counter others' arguments, and, through the assessments, expanding your ability to identify underlying themes and topics, and address them in writing, in preparation for your Dissertation. Each week you shall study a different facet of urban life in pre-modernity, looking at different case studies from across the period before ca. 1800 to critically engage with that theme and its implications for understanding the history of pre-modern urban spaces.

30 credits

The Global Cold War

This module explores the Cold War as a global phenomenon. While Europe played a central role in the origins and denouement of the ideological contest between the United States and the Soviet Union, for the past twenty years or so historians have explored in greater depth the impact of the Cold War in the global South. This latter group of scholars have examined the Cold War as a Superpower competition over the political and economic future of the so-called 'Third World' and explored the agency of actors in the global South. Studies have expanded beyond an initial focus on ideology, diplomacy and security to a wider set of issues including economic development, culture, and human rights, and beyond international histories to include transnational and domestic ones. We now have a Cold War historiography which stresses pluralism and diversity of conception, method, and interpretation.

Through a series of case studies ranging from Europe to Asia, Africa and Latin America and including the home front in the United States and the Soviet Union, we will examine these new historiographical developments. While remaining attentive to the local dynamics that drove political, economic, and social developments in Europe and the global South, we will explore the extent to which the Cold War structured the international system and constrained choices available to countries around the world. What was the Global Cold War? How did it play out and interact with local dynamics in specific locales? Is it possible to study the Cold War as a series of conflicts and transformations around the world without losing conceptual clarity? What are the methodological implications of studying the Cold War in a global perspective? 

30 credits

Women and Power

This module explores the roles women have played within and through structures and discourses of power: as wielders of office, as victims of persecution, and as agents of cultural change.

The module uses case studies from particular historical contexts - potentially ranging from the medieval to the modern - to engage with the methodological challenge of identifying female agency in the historical record.

It draws on a range of theoretical approaches and on written and material forms of evidence to enable you to reach your own insights.

30 credits

Wikipedia and History

Wikipedia is today probably the world's chief source of historical knowledge. Every day, its pages on history are read by many thousands of people. Yet professional historians tend to avoid engaging with it. This course seeks to change that. As well as discussing critical perspectives on Wikipedia, students will receive practical training in creating or editing a page on a historical topic. They will then apply their studies in a hands-on way to improving the encyclopedia's historical coverage, and reflect on the kind of historical knowledge of the period it promotes and disseminates.

15 credits

Work Placement in History

This module gives you the opportunity to gain experience working on a history-related project in the local community. This might be at a museum, archive, gallery, heritage site or working on a community project and may include undertaking activities such as historical research, developing an exhibition or organising an event.

You will be supported to choose a placement from those offered at the start of the academic year and will then work with the placement provider to finalise your role.

Wherever you go, you'll complete a placement of approximately 100 hours, gaining valuable insight into the day-to-day workings of these kinds of organisations. You'll develop history-specific vocational skills, the ability to interrogate public history, and you will also reflect on the issues involved in disseminating history outside academia through a reflective essay.

These kinds of skills are valuable whether you're looking for employment after the MA programme or are planning to continue your studies with a PhD.

15 credits

Digital Methods in Practice

This module aims to give students a practical overview of Digital Humanities, a subject which uses data science methods to provide a better understanding of arts, humanities and cultural data for research purposes. Building on the methodological introductions given in the IPA61001 module 'Introduction to Cultural Data', this module will present and discuss actual case studies that exemplify how digital approaches can be used to ask novel and ground-breaking research questions using cultural data. The module includes hands-on sessions where students will learn basic principles of selected digital tools, including text encoding, data visualisation, data analysis and 3D modelling, and be able to complete simple digital projects. Real-life cultural datasets will be used during the hands-on sessions, to give students the opportunity to encounter, and learn to tackle, the most common issues in the application of these technologies in research contexts. 



Attending this module, students will acquire a more concrete understanding of digital approaches to cultural data, learn how to critically leverage the specificity of the different data formats, and become familiar with current best practices.





This module does not assume any previous knowledge or experience with digital tools.

15 credits

Plus the below:
- Power, Politics and Culture in Britain after 1945
- Power and Protest
- Race and Racism
- Presenting the Past

Plus a language option.