History

Overview

Covering the period from 1550 to the present, you will explore the impact of big historical forces on ordinary lives, examining how the past affects us today as individuals and as communities.

You’ll take two subject modules in the first semester. Money-makers, Murderers, Medics and Mothers uncovers the multifaceted nature of women’s lives in the 17th and 18th centuries. In History from the Street: People's Lives from the C19th to the Present Day, you’ll examine the impact of global change on everyday life in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the second semester, you’ll take Customs, Rights, Resistance and Community Culture, 1714-1914, which looks at the nature of the customary rights upheld by rural and urban communities in England, and the social tensions that arose from their erosion by social, economic and religious changes over the period.

Alongside these, you’ll take two research methods modules. The first will support you as you transition from undergraduate to postgraduate studies, while the second will train you to write for, and present to, different audiences and help you prepare for your 15,000-word dissertation. This is the culmination of the MA programme and an opportunity for you to develop a research project on a topic of your choice, under expert supervision.

Offered as a one-year full-time course or part-time over two years, throughout this History programme from University of Hertfordshire you will be taught by our prize-winning academics, who publish widely and contribute regularly to national and international television and radio. Recent publications include Professor Owen Davies’s A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith During the First World War, Dr Katrina Navickas’s Protest and the Politics of Space and Place 1789 – 1848, Professor Jonathan Morris’s Coffee: A Global History and Dr Jennifer Evans’s Maladies and Medicine, 1540-1740.

If you choose to study part-time over two years, you will take one subject module and one research methods module in semester A and one subject module in semester B of year one. In year two, you will take one subject module in semester A and one research module, as well as writing your dissertation.

Careers

Employability underpins what we do. Our graduates go on to a variety of careers, including teaching, law, the heritage industry and museums, and the civil service. The History Group has good connections with school and sixth-form teachers of History, both from among our alumni and our collaborators on pedagogical research projects. Through the University’s Heritage Hub and the Professional Doctorate in Heritage, we also have established connections with heritage organisations and employers such as John Lewis.