History (Taught)

This MRes History is a taught postgraduate research course that equips you with the advanced historical research skills and conceptual framework you need to complete an individual, large-scale research project.

Why choose this course?

• Ideal if you are self-motivated, committed and interested in research, this MRes centres on you completing a 30,000-word dissertation in which you demonstrate the advanced historical research skills you have learned on the course’s two core modules.

• This course sits between our MA provision and PhD research degrees, and is suitable if you already have an MA in a humanities subject.

• It provides you with a valuable opportunity to complete independent, professional research and can be useful preparation for research at PhD level.

What you will learn

You will be taught practical historical skills and techniques, including:

• locating and retrieving historical material

• critiquing primary and secondary sources

• examining and organising historical information.

You will also develop the skills needed to complete your dissertation, including learning how to conceptualise a research project, write a proposal and plan your research.

How you will learn

This course’s core modules first focus on developing your analytical skills and project management skills through the planning and writing of a long literature review and development of a detailed research proposal.

Both modules are taught by experienced, research-active academics using a wide range of methodological and theoretical approaches. For your research project, you will work with a supervisor who is an internationally renowned specialist in your chosen field. You will also be invited to events organised by, and for, our vibrant MPhil/PhD community, which provide opportunities to meet new academic and intellectual contacts.

This course is available to study full- or part-time with classes taking place in the evening.

Highlights

• Birkbeck was ranked in the top eight universities in the UK for its History research in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework.

• Our research is unique in its range across geographical and chronological boundaries. We are the only university in London to include historians, classicists, archaeologists and art historians in the same team of academics investigating every period from prehistory to the early twenty-first century. We see the study of the past as crucial for our understanding of present-day society, culture and politics.

• All MA students are eligible to apply for our prestigious Eric Hobsbawm Scholarships, subject to availability. One of the most influential historians of the twentieth century, Eric Hobsbawm taught at Birkbeck for over five decades.

• We are at the heart of academic London with access to unparalleled research resources such as the Institute of Historical Research and the Institute of Classical Studies, the British Museum and the British Library.

• We are home to a number of affiliated research centres that actively run seminars, conferences and other events where some of the world's best scholars present their latest research. These include the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, the Raphael Samuel History Centre and the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.

Careers and employability

On successfully graduating from this MRes History you will have gained an array of important transferable skills, including in:

• analysis

• research

• project management

• writing.

Studying this course will prepare you for career paths in a range of fields and professions including:

• historian

• higher education lecturer

• archivist

• journalist

• heritage manager

• author

• librarian

• museum/gallery curator.

Graduates from this course have gone on to be employed in education and at thinktanks, the BBC and Reuters.