UCL CENTRE FOR TRANSNATIONAL HISTORY

Course Tutor: Axel Körner

The MA Transnational Studies is a closely integrated cross-disciplinary programme taught by specialists from different UCL faculties, including experts on Europe, the Americas, the Near East and East Asia. The course is aimed at students with an academic background in humanities, social and political sciences, law or global health as well as professionals working in the transnational sector (NGOs, international organisations, development).

What will I learn?

You will study the transnational movement of people, ideas and goods on a global scale and the impact of such connections on our social, political and cultural life worlds. Approaching transnationality as a historical and contemporary phenomenon, you will be taught by specialists in human rights, international relations, economics, health and migration.

Degree Structure:

Availability: Full-time 1 year; Part-time 2 years

Students undertake courses to the value of 180 credits.

Core modules:

• Transnational Approaches (15 credits)
• Research Skills (15 credits)

Students choose up to three optional courses (45 credits) from a list of over 30 modules in different disciplines. These might include:

• Cultural Exchange: methods and approaches
• Thinking Postcolonially
• International and EU Refugee Law

• Economics of Transition
• Population and Development
• Migration and Transformation
• Comparable Peace Processes
• Security, Identity, Polarity
• Anthropology of Art and Design
• Practical Documentary Filmmaking

Languages:

• The degree includes a half unit (15 credits) in a Modern Language at beginners or advanced level (Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, major European languages, including Russian and Central European languages).

Dissertation:

• All students undertake an independent research project for which they produce a dissertation of 15,000 words (90 credits)

• For more information on the MA in Transnational Studies
  

The MA in History provides the opportunity to combine specialised historical study of a variety of periods and locations with training in essential research skills. By offering a high degree of flexibility, the programme encourages students to think across the boundaries of particular times and places, and develop comparative and cross-disciplinary perspectives on world history from the medieval era to the present day. Students are able to choose from a broad range of optional taught courses, which reflect the extensive geographical, chronological and methodological diversity of the research expertise of the UCL Department of History, as well as the Departments of Italian, German, Scandinavian Studies, Goldsmiths College, the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, and other selected departments in the University of London. Alongside these options, the core course provides students with training in historical research skills, introducing the principal research resources available in London, providing guidance on methodology and techniques of presentation and publication, and offering teaching by leading practitioners on key debates in current historical circles. 

• For more information on the MA in History 

The MA in European History, run jointly with the UCL Centre for European Studies, is designed to encourage students to pursue their interests in European history in depth and to obtain training specifically designed for undertaking research in European history. Geographically, the degree deals with West, Central, Eastern and Southern Europe and regions such as Scandinavia and the Balkans. It offers the opportunity to study European History in a transnational and comparative perspective and at the same time to focus on specific European countries or regions. There are optional courses on the history of single countries such as France, Britain, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Russia and the Soviet Union among others. These courses cover different sub-disciplines of history, including social and economic history, political history, cultural and intellectual history, gender history, diplomatic and military history. The degree's core course introduces students to specific research skills and to different theoretical, methodological and historiographical approaches of writing European history. The chronology of the various components covers the medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary periods. 

• For more information on the MA in European History 

• For more information on doctoral research in the History Department at UCL

The MA in the Dutch Golden Age is designed to give students a thorough understanding of the history and culture of the Netherlands in the early modern period, focusing on the Dutch Republic during its seventeenth-century efflorescence. Jointly offered by UCL, King's College, and the Courtauld Institute, the programme draws on the full range of expertise within the University of London for study of this subject. Interdisciplinary, it combines three fields: history, art history, and Dutch language/literature. Students take a course in each of these fields over the autumn and spring terms. In addition, they attend a bi-weekly research skills seminar. In the third term and over the following summer, they write a dissertation that links the different fields covered in the taught courses. Most students take the programme full-time over one year (September to September), but the option also exists to take it part-time over two.

• For more information on the MA in the Dutch Golden Age

The MA in the History of Political Thought and Intellectual History is an intercollegiate University of London programme which draws on the expertise of academic staff from the Colleges and Institutes of the University as a whole in the fields of the history of political thought and intellectual history. The programme offers advanced training in intellectual history, the history of political thought and the history of philosophy, spanning the period from the ancient world to the twenty-first century. 

• For more information on the MA History of Political Thought

The MA in Ancient History draws on the resources of the whole Federal University of London. The MA provides research training above all through its Sources and Methods core-course, which offers the opportunity to get to grips with other disciplines useful to Ancient Historians, notably social anthropology, and with auxiliary techniques which cannot usually be learned in a first degree: notably archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, papyrology, and textual criticism. It also offers teaching in Greek, Latin, and other ancient Italic languages, and Ancient Near Eastern Languages.

• For more information on the MA in Ancient History