MA History

For entry in the academic year beginning September 2026, the tuition fees are as follows:

• MA (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £13,700
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £28,400
• MA (part-time)
  UK students (per annum): £6,850
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £14,200

Further information for EU students can be found on our dedicated EU page.

The fees quoted above will be fully inclusive for the course tuition, administration and computational costs during your studies.

All fees for entry will be subject to yearly review and incremental rises per annum are also likely over the duration of courses lasting more than a year for UK/EU students (fees are typically fixed for International students, for the course duration at the year of entry). For general fees information please visit: postgraduate fees . Always contact the department if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

Self-funded international applicants for this course will be required to pay a deposit of £1000 towards their tuition fees before a confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) is issued. This deposit will only be refunded if immigration permission is refused. We will notify you about how and when to make this payment.

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

• Information on university funding, loans, and scholarships available on the Masters student funding page
• The Faculty of Humanities offered a range of scholarship opportunities for eligible applicants starting in September 2025. Please check back to confirm availability for September 2026 start.
• Please visit the school funding page for more information on subject funding available
• Other funding for EU and international students is on our country-specific pages .

In the history of science, technology and medicine (HSTM) and related fields, researchers use a variety of analytical and theoretical approaches to interpret the past in different ways: making sense of historical practices and ideas, of broader issues such as the relationship between STM and society, and even how we conceive of ‘society’ itself. These different analytical approaches are the focus of this unit. Each week we introduce, discuss and critically appraise significant conceptual models and approaches in HSTM. We analyse how and why specific approaches emerged and have a history themselves, discuss their relationship to trends in other fields, as well as their benefits and drawbacks in comparison to alternative methods. The unit further contextualises the ideas and concepts introduced in Major Themes and will help you think about different analytical tools you might employ in your semester two assignments and dissertation.

Topics addressed include: -

• Historiographic foundations of STM
• Sociology of Scientific Knowledge and Actor Network Theory
• Gender and STM
•  HSTM ‘from below’
• The medical humanities
• Writing HSTM in the Anthropocene

The unit aims to:

• introduce students to key methodological and analytical approaches to the history of science, technology and medicine (HSTM) and medical humanities (MH);
• give students an understanding of changing scholarly approaches to the understanding of HSTM;
• enable students to analyse critically key methods and techniques used by researchers to understand and analyze science, technology and medicine in their historical and cultural contexts;
• give students the skills and knowledge to produce critical writing of scholarly books and articles that reveal and assess approaches, methods and techniques
• promote scholarly reflection on the relationship between expert knowledge of STM and human experience;
• enable students to communicate HSTM and MH concepts and approaches through a variety of media.

• Critical analysis of key text in HSTM (1000 words) 30% weighting                         

  Essay presenting an argument on a particular historiographic problem or methodological approach (2000 words) 70% weighting

General comments on standard programme feedback sheet; specific notes via GradeMark; standard turnaround time applies