Program Overview

Capitalising on our research expertise, the History MA combines taught and individual approaches, enabling you to focus on specific areas of interest that drive your passion for the subject. We will provide you with the academic rigour of advanced-level learning and equip you with the practical skills involved in independent research, giving you first-hand experience of conference management, presenting work and writing for publications. This course is an ideal stepping-stone to either research at PhD level or a career in teaching, publishing, research or event management.

You will contextualise, analyse and problematise the past, considering key questions in current historiography and how history has been written across time and place. By engaging with debates around how public history is constructed, contested and represented in society, you will produce your own ‘heritage’ project and also consider how the digital age has impacted on the growth of the heritage sector. Our specialist Global Leicester module will provide you with an opportunity to understand the importance of place and scale, spanning across the historical periods and blending the local with global narratives.

You will collaborate with fellow students to organise and participate in a one-day humanities conference, gaining skills in event management and presenting a paper. The course culminates in a dissertation, where you will use your independent research skills to develop an extended piece of writing in your chosen area, with supervision from one of our academic experts. This course is ideal for students who are self-motivated, with good time management and the ability to work independently, as these skills will be developed throughout.

Our teaching team produces ground-breaking work on topics such as internment in the First World War, the history of Montenegro, cultural exchanges in the Indian Ocean World and the history and heritage of the Olympic Games. Their research has featured in the media, including the BBC’s TV programme My Family, Partition and Me: India 1947, and BBC Radio 4 Extra’s Sport and the British.

Key features

• Join a community of leading scholars who produce ground-breaking research, stimulating your learning experience with their cutting-edge insights and enabling you to benefit from their links with museums and galleries.
• We will challenge you to rethink your approach to history by exploring historiography across a range of themes, including global and transnational histories, empires and colonies, orientalism and Occidentalism, social history, cultural history and postmodernism, materiality and visual history, and gender history.
• Benefit from collaborative teaching in workshops with fellow students as well as individual learning experiences and receive personalised feedback to achieve your independent research goals.
• You will have access to our special collections, which span from 1474 to the present day and encompass the history of DMU as an institution, collections on sports history, performance and art, history of photography, fashion and textiles, and the history of Leicester.
• Participate in the DMU research community through open seminars and conferences with our research centres, including the International Centre for Sports History and Cultures, Photographic History Research Centre and the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre.
• The focus on individual research and fostering your skills as an independent learner provides ideal preparation for progression to PhD. Practical experience gained in conference management, presenting work and writing for publication will be excellent preparation for a career in teaching, publishing, research or event management.