Digital Scholarship (Taught)

The information provided on this page was correct at the time of publication (November 2025). For complete and up-to-date information about this course, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas.

The MSc in Digital Scholarship is a taught course exploring how digital tools transform humanistic research. It combines lectures, seminars, and a practicum, culminating in a dissertation with optional digital outputs.

It is anticipated that you will learn to lead and manage digital projects in and outside the strictly academic domain and gain the expertise to progress to innovative doctoral research projects.

Course structure
The course is comprised of four main elements, each of which helps you prepare for the dissertation. These include a core paper Elements of Digital Scholarship, two technical options papers around Methods of Digital Scholarship, a subject-specific paper and a Practicum placement to gain experience developing your proposed research topic.

All of this work culminates in the dissertation, which is formulated flexibly to encourage both traditional academic prose and non-traditional digital outputs. You will work with a supervisor and have up to six hours of contact time/ support from them, starting at the end of Michaelmas term and continuing through Hilary term, though the bulk of the work will be concentrated in Trinity (summer) term.

You will be able to participate in the rich research culture of Oxford’s Digital Scholarship @ Oxford. This includes a programme of talks and seminars, an annual Summer School, and networking opportunities within Oxford's vibrant digital scholarship community at the Bodleian's Centre for Digital Scholarship.

The Oxford Centre for Research in the Humanities (TORCH) offers a stimulating range of interdisciplinary activities. Further opportunities for exchange are provided by the interdisciplinary communities fostered within individual colleges.

You will also be able to attend seminars and other events from across the faculties of the Humanities Division, thereby encountering a wide range of leading writers, critics, and theorists from within and beyond the University.

If your application is successful, it is recommended that you take the Humanities Research in the Digital Age open-access online course (developed by the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership) before the MSc begins, to ensure that you have comprehensive background knowledge of the field.