Close
About the Programme
Immerse yourself in art and artefacts from every time and place with a Master's in History of Art at UCL. Over a full year, you'll build the expertise to engage with visual and material cultures critically, interpreting them within their social and cultural contexts. Guided by UCL's renowned academics in a large, multi-disciplinary university, you'll explore contemporary methodological debates, define your own scholarly stance, and evolve into an independent researcher. This programme offers an excellent foundation for a dynamic career in academia, heritage or curation, empowering you to make a meaningful impact on art and culture.
Why UCL History of Art?
Hear from Dr Aparna Kumar about what makes the MA History of Art programme at UCL unique:
Programme Teaching and Supervision
The program is delivered through a combination of lectures, seminars, tutorials, as well as gallery and museum visits. Students undertake modules to the value of 180 credits over the span of 12 months for full-time students or 24-months for part-time students. The core curricular components of the program are:
- HIST0121 Critical Debates and Methods in History of Art (20 weeks; 30 credits; 60+ contact hours)
- 2 MA Special Subject Modules (30 credits each; 20 weeks; 40+ contact hours)
- Dissertation (13,000-word research essay)
Special Subject Modules 2025-2026
These focused courses are linked directly to the current research of staff in the department and are subject to change year on year. For prospective students, the below can be used for indicative purposes as a demonstration of the types of courses that could be available. In line with the aims of the programme—to encourage students to engage with the field as a whole—students will normally take one course from Group One and one from Group Two. Full descriptions of our special subject modules can be found here.
Group One
• Histories of Ecological Form
• Art and Technology in Nineteenth-Century France
• Seeing Through Materials: Matter, Vision, and Transformation in the Renaissance
• History of Rainbows: art, visual culture, and knowledge in early modern England
Group Two
• The World, The Museum, and The Colony
• Race/Place: Exotic/Erotic
• American Documentary: Inventions, Reinventions and Afterlives
• Matter Redefined
Research at UCL History of Art
History of Art MA students have the opportunity to work with a wide range of faculty, whose research expertise span an array of temporalities, geographies, and methodological concerns within the discipline, including long-standing commitments to feminist studies, issues of class and inequality, and visual studies of difference. Find out more about the art history that our academics and research centres undertake.
The Department also has strong expertise in the study of print culture and other visual technologies, which has been amplified by commitments to material studies and conservation, a focus of our unique laboratory facilities both in Bloomsbury and UCL East. History of Art MA students will have the opportunity to engage:
• Material Studies Laboratory (in Bloomsbury)
• Conservation Laboratory and Media Conservation Studios (in UCL East)
The department’s research culture is energized by a number of annual lecture series and seminars, shaped by ongoing collaborations between faculty and postgraduate students:
• Nikos Stangos Memorial Lecture
• Tomás Harris Visiting Professorship
• Departmental Research Seminar
• Centre for the Study of Contemporary Art (CSCA)
• Past Imperfect
Based in the Social Historical Sciences Faculty, the History of Art department is part of a wider interdisciplinary research network, which offers History of Art MA students access to a number of seminars and events across the university, within the University of London network, and at neighbouring institutions in Bloomsbury, including:
• The Institute of Historical Research, including the Collecting and Display seminar
• Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation
• The Slade School of Fine Art
• UCL Institute of Archaeology
• The Warburg Institute
• The Bartlett School of Architecture
• School of Arts, SOAS
Facilities and Partners
Being at the heart of UCL’s Bloomsbury campus provides access to many collaborative and creative spaces:
• The Culture Lab
• UCL Urban Room
• Memory Workshop
• Media Productions Studio
• Community Cinema
• Slade Studio
We work closely with partners in the heritage and cultural sectors, from trips and visits to collaborative projects, especially within Bloomsbury:
- UCL Art Museum
- UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology
- UCL Grant Museum of Zoology
- UCL Special Collections, including a short video of Special Collections teaching in the Culture Lab
- SOAS Gallery
- British Museum
- British Library
- National Gallery
- Tate Britain
- Tate Modern
- Victoria and Albert Museum
Funding the MA
History of Art MA students may also wish to consider the following funding opportunities, which have been used by current/former postgraduate students:
- New Narratives Scholarships, Paul Mellon Centre
- The Klesch Collection Grants for Education
- The Aziz Foundation
For a more comprehensive list of MA funding accessible across UCL, visit the Scholarships and Funding website. You may find the UCL Scholarships Finder of particular use.