About the Programme
MA History is our flagship MA programme. It enables you to range widely in time and space, develop your own research interests, and be in dialogue with and guided by some of the best historians at work today.
The MA History is divided into four pathways. Each has a compulsory core course that introduces you to your pathway's theories, methods, and debates. This is the hub of your intellectual community for the year. Optional modules allow you to explore historical subjects directly related to your pathway. You can also choose elective modules freely from a wide range of options.
Open Event
Hear from Dr Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite about studying MA History at UCL:
Pathways
- Culture, Ideas, and Identities
You will examine culturally constructed aspects of historical experience. The pathway’s subject matter includes the wide variety of meaning-laden objects and practices produced in the past or engaged in by different segments of society. Thus, it examines the history of what traditionally has been identified as ‘culture’ with a capital ‘C’, including the ideas articulated by intellectual elites, as well as history ‘from below’, popular culture, and vernacular cultures. You will build knowledge of key conceptual and historiographical approaches and debates, thinking across periods and geographic areas.
Find out more about the core course.
Watch Dr Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Dr Chloe Ireton discuss the Culture, Ideas and Identities pathway:
MediaCentral Widget Placeholderhttps://mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Player/6DIfCh9G Intellectual ResourcesThe pathway allows you to develop intellectual connections with research networks within and beyond UCL:
- UCL's Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation
- The Institute of Historical Research runs over 50 seminar series, including Women's History, History of Sexuality, Gender and History in the Americas, Architectural History, Collecting and Display, History of Political Ideas, Modern Religious History, People, Place and Community and Socialist History
- Students on the pathway draw on a wealth of archives and collections relating to art, visual and material culture in London, including the Warburg Institute, British Museum, Tate and V&A
Explore Further
- Watch Professor Benedetta Rossi's inaugural lecture, 'Africa in the Global History of Slavery and Abolition'
- Watch Professor Sophie Page's inaugural lecture, 'Entangled Magic in the Medieval Latin West'
- Environment, State, and Economy
You will explore the connections between environmental, economic, and political change from a long-term perspective. We will examine the relationship between humans and their environment and ask what impact this relationship had on the formation of states, the Industrial Revolution, technological development, colonialism and economic inequality. The core module will help you acquire expertise in cutting-edge debates over the Great Divergence, the Anthropocene, ecological imperialism and climate change.
Find out more about the core course.
Watch Dr Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Dr Nora Qiu, and Dr Robert Suits discuss the Environment, State and Economy pathway:
MediaCentral Widget Placeholderhttps://mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Player/jd31JD9E Intellectual ResourcesThe pathway allows you to develop intellectual connections with research networks within and beyond UCL:
- UCL Anthropocene
- UCL Social Data Institute
- The Institute of Historical Research’s Economic and Social History of the Early Modern World seminar
Explore Further
- Watch Professor John Sabapathy's inaugural lecture, 'Cockaigne'
- View Dr Robert Suits’s Visualisation of US energy use since 1805
- Empires and Global History
You will examine and interrogate a set of overlapping concerns that have not only shaped global history, imperial history, and histories of empire but also stirred debate about the dividing line between such historiographical approaches. The first is with scale in historical analysis and the effort to move beyond the nation-state to consider empire, region, continent, the terrestrial or terraqueous globe, and even the planet as a unit of inquiry. The second is with connections between historical agents across and between these units. The last is with comparisons across space and time. Rather than being entirely pacific or underpinning ‘progress’, some connections supported the making or deepening of division, inequality, coercion, and violence.
Find out more about the core course.
Intellectual Resources
The pathway allows you to develop intellectual connections with research networks within and beyond UCL:
- UCL History Department’s Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery
- UCL History Department’s Centre for Global and Transnational History
- UCL’s Centre for the Study of South Asia and the Indian Ocean World
- The Institute of Historical Research’s seminars, including International History and Economic and Social History of the Early Modern World
- The Royal Asiatic Society
- Students draw on archives and special collections such as those held at the British Library, British Museum, The National Archives, and Royal Asiatic Society
Explore Further
Watch and read:
- Professor Matthew Smith’s inaugural lecture, 'A Troubled Freedom: Power & Caribbean Memory of Slavery'
- Margot Finn and Kate Smith, The East India Company at Home, 1757-1857 (2018) is available online open-access
- Watch Professor Benedetta Rossi’s inaugural lecture, ‘Africa in the Global History of Slavery and Abolition’
- Modern British History
You will learn about modern British history’s complexity, diversity, and vibrancy as a field of study. You will identify key areas of historiographical debate, think critically about the field’s boundaries, and question what constitutes modern British history in its temporal and spatial dimensions. The pathway encourages you to problematise the idea of ‘national’ history, providing opportunities to explore the transnational, imperial, global, and comparative dimensions of political, economic, social, cultural, and intellectual life within a ‘British history’ framework.
Find out more about the core course.
Watch Dr Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite introduce the pathway:
MediaCentral Widget Placeholderhttps://mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Player/3GFgigg4 Intellectual ResourcesThe pathway allows you to develop intellectual connections with research networks within and beyond UCL:
- UCL History Department’s Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery
- The Institute of Historical Research’s research seminars on Britain at Home and Abroad since 1800, Black British History, and Contemporary British History
- Students on the pathway draw on an unparalleled array of archival collections to research the history of Britain, the British Empire, and decolonization, including The National Archives, the British Library, UCL Special Collections, Wellcome Collection, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Mayday Rooms, the Bishopsgate Institute, Women’s Library@LSE, the Feminist Library, Imperial War Museum, the London Archives, the Museum of London, the British Museum, V&A, Black Cultural Archives, Lambeth Palace Archives
Explore Further
Download open-access books by staff connected with the pathway:
- Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Aled Davies and Ben Jackson, ed., The Neoliberal Age? Britain since the 1970s (2021)
- Margot Finn and Kate Smith, The East India Company at Home, 1757-1857 (2018)
Watch and listen:
- Professor Heather Jones’s major two-part BBC history of the Easter Rising
- Professor Matt Smith’s inaugural lecture, 'A Troubled Freedom: Power & Caribbean Memory of Slavery'
- Professor Margot Finn’s final lecture as President of the Royal Historical Society on the British Empire and Material Culture
Staff
Research-based teaching is central to everything we do at UCL. You are taught by people doing cutting-edge research on the questions and sources you are working on together. When not on research leave, all our faculty supervise Master’s students.
View our staff by period, region and research interest.