Program Overview

Our innovative History degree has been designed to enable you to acquire specialised subject knowledge while developing practical and professional skills that you can apply to contemporary challenges, issues and debates.

Our History course is inspiring, innovative and compelling. We start with our amazing location – the Newton Park campus is beautiful, but it’s also a historic resource in its own right and a way into a wide range of historical subjects and approaches – from reading a landscape to analysing the symbols of wealth and power.

The cities of Bath and Bristol, right on our doorstep, offer an extraordinary wealth of material for historical study. Bristol, after all, is the city where the statue of Edward Colston was toppled into the river, and made us all reflect on the ways in which history continues to shape the present. The subject is vital: we need to understand where we’ve been, to have a sense of where we might go next.

We also offer a unique approach to learning in and outside your subject. We work collaboratively with a wide range of disciplines to offer you the best possible foundation for your studies, so that you can place history in context and make connections across time and place. In the first and second year, this means that you’ll deepen your knowledge of history, but also develop your understanding of it through work in literature, philosophy or politics – the ways in which we see the world, and the ways others do. In your final year, you’ll be able to produce a major piece of historical work of your own, building on and demonstrating the skills you’ve already acquired.

We combine the academic study of history with skill-based modules to create our ‘hands-on’ History degree. You could find yourself learning to write a funding application for one of your modules, and sifting through primary sources at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre or Bath City Archives on another.

You’ll gain broad historical skills and expertise – how to read historical texts; how to use a wide range of historical sources; how to discuss and debate historical subjects. You’ll also learn to analyse, process information, make decisions, manage projects, network, collaborate, and work with experts inside and outside of the University.

Professional Placement Year

This optional placement year provides you with the opportunity to identify, apply for, and secure professional experience, normally comprising one to three placements over a minimum of nine months. Successful completion of this module will demonstrate your ability to secure and sustain graduate-level employment.

By completing the module, you'll be entitled to the addition of 'with Professional Placement Year' to your degree title.