Course description
MA in Historical Studies
The MA in Historical Studies is a Research Masters degree designed to offer a grounding in historical research and to prepare the student for higher study at PhD level. The programme is focussed on a 20-25,000 word dissertation, worth 50% of the final mark. Students can choose to pursue any period or area of history for which the department can offer supervision. and each has a personal research supervisor.
The three core modules
-Research Design and Strategy for Historians
-Historiography
-Archive Skills
offer training in the fundamental skills and the theoretical basis of the subject essential for historical research work, and directly support the dissertation. In the second semester students can choose from a range of options, including specific research skills, such as palaeography, languages or more further study in their chosen historical period. Current optional modules include:
-Approaches to Medieval History
-Texts and their Contexts in Early-Modern Europe
-Agrarian History
-British Urban History since 1700
-Fascism in Europe, 1919-1945
-The Presidency of John F. Kennedy, 1960-1963
-Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1945-1991
-Winston Churchill's Second World War as History
-The Slave Trade: Abolition and Suppression
-Socio-Economic Theory and Analysis
-Quantitative Methods for Historians.
Students on the programme can also specialise in maritime history, in which there is a range of modules including
-The Ship in History
-British Merchant Shipping since c.1780.