BA (Hons) History

You will be taught through a combination of lectures, seminars, workshops, and ‘hands on’ sessions out in the world, rather than on campus, as well as on some field trips. You will typically have around 12 contact hours per week although your contact hours in Years 2 and 3 will depend on the optional modules that you select.

You will be supported in your learning through regular access to your tutors, who have office hours devoted to students each week, and through one-to-one tutorials during a designated tutorial week in each semester. You can meet periodically with your personal academic tutor and the Course Team run regular ‘surgeries’ where any issues can be raised and addressed. All modules are supported by a virtual learning environment (VLE), providing information, lecture recordings, resources, and a variety of materials geared towards your development. You'll also have access to IT and library facilities throughout your course.

In Year 2, you will have an exciting ‘challenge’ opportunity to complete an employability placement or ‘industry brief’ using your historical training, which will develop a range of crucial graduate skills. In year 3, the ‘pathways’ which history graduates take into an array of vibrant workplaces are explored in detail in ‘Being a Historian’. You will graduate ‘job-ready’ with a curated ‘portfolio’ of your best work from your degree, paired with a summarising letter of reference for you written by the Course Team.

When not attending lectures, seminars, workshops or other timetabled sessions you will continue learning through self-study. Typically, this involves reading journal articles and books, undertaking research in the library, and preparing for coursework assignments, workshops and seminars. Your module tutor will direct you towards specific readings or activities to complete before classes, or between them.

For the Major Project in Year 3, you will undertake independent research, working under the supervision of a member of the History team who you will meet with regularly. This project can take the traditional form of a dissertation, or, it can be a creative outlet for newer and inspiring forms of history such as a podcast, a customised key stage curriculum, or a historical context policy briefing for a parliamentary committee.

You will have around 10-12 hours of formal ‘in-class’ contact time in each teaching week. Generally speaking, each module requires 2 points of formal assessment, and the overall volume of work you will produce increases a little bit each year, building you up as a writer and independent researcher. A handy rule is to spend one hour preparing for every hour you will be in a classroom setting. Some weeks might require more of your time as you prepare assessments for submission, others might make gentler demands on your time.

You will be taught by staff who are all professional historians, passionate teachers, and experts in their respective fields. We are active and published researchers of national and international standing, and in class you will experience ‘research-led’ teaching, sometimes even exploring new research topics or projects with your lecturers before anyone else!

All our team members hold doctoral qualifications and are experienced teachers. You can find out more about the current teaching on our History subject area web page.

Postgraduate students sometimes assist in teaching and in assessing some modules, working alongside experienced members of staff. The permanent course team teach the vast majority of lectures and seminars across all three years of the degree.