Historical Research MA

Program Overview

The MA in Historical Research is a customizable program designed to prepare students for PhD study. It offers a tailored approach, allowing students to focus on their research interests and develop their understanding of history along with their research skills. The program includes a dissertation, core modules, and a choice of approaches modules tailored to different historical periods and topics. Students have the opportunity to further develop their skills through a wide range of optional modules.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

The MA in Historical Research is a flexible program designed to support students' preparation for future PhD study. It offers a tailored approach to MA study, allowing students to focus on their own research interests. The program aims to develop students' understanding of their chosen area of history while honing their research skills.

Outline:

The program consists of a taught component and a dissertation. The taught component is designed to develop students' understanding of key historiographical and methodological approaches. Students take two core modules and one approaches module.

Core Modules:

• Research Presentation for Historians: This module equips students with the skills and experience needed to present and communicate a defined historical research project to an academic audience.
Students will identify the specific research questions driving their dissertation and learn how to discuss the sources and approaches they are using to answer them. They will also develop their ability to present their research data and findings in an accessible form to an audience and enhance their ability to use presentational aids. Students will give their final presentation at a 'postgraduate conference' style assessment day to an audience of academic staff and fellow postgraduates. Presentations are assessed equally on content and communication.
• Dissertation in Historical Research: This module involves an intensive individual research project based on a collection of primary sources.
Students will present their findings in a dissertation of 18,000 words. The dissertation represents an original and sustained piece of independent research and should be based on a substantial primary source base and demonstrate a thorough and advanced knowledge of the secondary literature. Students will work under the supervision of an expert member of staff who will provide guidance and regular tutorial support.

Approaches Modules:

Students choose one from the following:

• Approaching the Middle Ages: This module provides students with a grounding in key themes and debates in current medieval research.
Classes will focus on historiographical developments and new methodological approaches to familiar problems, covering topics such as the problems of studying pre-industrial societies, the interpretation of material culture, methods for studying the medieval economy, and the examination of power structures and political culture. Students will also be introduced to technical and methodological problems associated with the effective use and interpretation of pre-modern sources, such as court records, tax records and accounts, chronicles and pamphlets, paintings, drawings and artefacts.
• Early Modernities: This module involves a critical analysis of the many ways in which assumptions about the characteristics of 'pre-modern' and 'modern' cultures and societies have shaped historians' approaches to the early modern period.
A series of seminars will introduce students to themes and topics in early modern history, focusing on issues of 'individuality' and 'self-hood' in the early modern period. The sources for writing early modern history will be a complementary focus of the module, which will also introduce students to the technical and methodological problems associated with the effective use and interpretation of a range of pre-modern sources.
• Modernity and Power: Individuals and the State in the Modern World: This module introduces students to the challenges of studying modern history at an advanced level.
It explores the distinctiveness of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a period, the study of which raises particular questions about perspective and interpretation, about the relationship between academic history and public understandings of the recent past, and about the selection and treatment of sources across a wide range of media. Classes will focus on some of the key themes and developments in recent historiography, including an engagement with the use of interdisciplinary approaches, particularly in the study of contemporary history.
• Approaches to the American Past: This module explores key themes in American history from the colonial through to the modern eras, introducing students to important debates in historical scholarship and giving them an awareness not only of the principal historiographical schools but also of the critical interrelationship between historical trends and events and scholarly interpretations of the past.
Classes will be organised chronologically and thematically and will be taught through the examination of key historiographical approaches. Case studies covering topics such as Native American history, consumption, gender, class, slavery, immigration and ethnicity, the New Deal, revisionism and the Cold War, and the New Left will help students apply and critique the conceptual literature they are exploring.
• The World in Connection: Themes in Global History: This module introduces students to some of the most important and innovative themes, debates and controversies relating to global history and its linked fields of imperial, international, transnational, transregional and world history.
Students will thus be enabled to explore connections, comparisons and exchanges across broad geographical and chronological terrain, while also considering relationships between the global, regional and local.

Option Modules:

Students choose 60 credits of option modules. Full-time students will normally take 30 credits of options in semester one and 45 credits in semester two, usually including one 30 credit option. Part-time students will normally take all of their option modules in year one: 15 credits in semester one and 45 credits in semester two, usually including one 30 credit option. This 60 credit selection can include up to 30 credits from the guided list of non-history modules. The context provides a list of example 15 credit option modules and 30 credit option modules.

Assessment:

Students are assessed through a combination of written papers, classroom activities, oral presentations, and a dissertation.

Teaching:

Students are taught through seminars, workshops, and individual tutorials. Teaching and assessment methods may vary for non-history modules.

Careers:

An MA in history will further develop the range of transferable skills at students' disposal. Students have the freedom to tailor their research and focus on the skills that are most important to them. The program offers modules that are specifically designed to provide students with skills in public history. These kinds of skills are why graduates are successful in both further study and a wide range of careers, from lecturing and working in the museum and tourist industry to business management, marketing, law, and working in the media. The university offers tailored support for students planning to progress to PhD study following their MA degree.

Other:

The program is taught by historians who are engaged in cutting-edge research in a huge variety of fields which range from 1000 BCE right up to the twenty-first century. This diversity feeds into a vibrant and varied curriculum which allows students to pursue their interests across both space and time. Students will be joining a thriving postgraduate community with regular activities to share their ideas, challenge their thinking, and broaden their understanding.