Political Thought and Intellectual History University of Cambridge

Overview

The Political Thought and Intellectual History course from the University of Cambridge attracts students from all over the world, and its training provides an ideal foundation from which to proceed to doctoral research, not only in the United Kingdom, but in North American, European, Asian and Southern Hemisphere university systems.

The MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History combines taught and research elements over a nine-month full-time programme, though priority is given to the pursuit of the individual student’s research. Classes are provided in methodology, in the reading of selected texts, and in selected concepts: these are intended to be "exemplary", offering opportunities to explore different methods used in the field, different approaches to reading texts, and a variety of political concepts. 

Key facts:

Students on the MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History will be provided with an in-depth study of some of the key areas of research in political thought and intellectual history and all students will have a supervisor who will guide them through the requirements of the course and, most crucially, the dissertation.

In this manner, all students are provided with the historiographical knowledge and analytical skills necessary to understand and evaluate existing research and to pursue research in their own fields of intellectual interest. Through individual supervisions and group classes students are introduced to the more specialised and intensive nature of research required at a postgraduate level.By the end of the programme, students will have acquired:

• an enhanced understanding of the history of political thought as well as an appreciation of the broader theoretical approaches and intellectual idioms that inform its study;
• acquired the analytical capacity to pursue independent study of primary texts in the history of political thought and to evaluate the findings of secondary commentators; and
• acquired the ability to situate their own research findings within the context of previous and current interpretative scholarly debates in the field of political thought and intellectual history.