MA History

Fees for entry in 2027 have not yet been set. For reference, the fees for the academic year beginning September 2026 were as follows:

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

The fees quoted above are fully inclusive of tuition, administration and computational costs.

Fees for entry are subject to yearly review. The University reserves the right to increase your tuition fee by up to 7% each year for courses lasting more than one year, including to reflect rising costs associated with delivering our educational and wider student experience. Postgraduate fees information .

Always contact the admissions team if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

International student CAS deposit

Self-funded international applicants are required to pay a deposit of £2500 towards their tuition fees before a confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) is issued. Some applicants will be required to pay a higher deposit. More information on tuition fee deposits .

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).

We know that student finance can be complicated. The links below provide further information to help guide you.

• Learn more about - student finance options for UK students.
• Learn more about - fees and finance for international students .
• Graduates of The University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University can receive a 10% discount on their master's degree tuition fees as part of our Manchester Alumni Loyalty Discount scheme.

This course considers how ideas, understandings, and practices around risk have become essential to modern science, technology and medicine, and thus human life. It begins by considering how mathematical and statistical thinking were employed in economics, and how quantified understandings of risk have been deployed by experts to explain, guide and interpret human fates in the natural and social world. Drawing on history and sociology of STM and science and technology studies, we begin in the late eighteenth century and continue up to the present day.

This unit aims to 

• introduce students to the history of ideas about, understandings of, and practices regarding risk, especially as they have been conditioned by science, technology and medicine.
• develop understanding of how and why past experts have assessed risks and how everyday people have conceptualised risk and scientific thinking about it in their own lives
• encourage students to consider both expert conceptions of risk and lay experiences of risk in broader historical, sociological and anthropological contexts
• promote appreciation of how science, technology and medicine have interacted to produce risk thinking as a feature of modern life
• develop students’ skills in analysing and discussing primary and secondary literature relating to the history of risk in science, technology and medicine
• enhance students’ research and essay-writing skills, and provide suitable grounding for dissertation research into history of science, technology and medicine; science and health communication; history; sociology; and health sciences.

Lecturers will offer feedback on drafts, at a level consistent with being able to offer an equal degree of support to all students in the group. Essays will be submitted, and feedback delivered, electronically, typically via Turnitin GradeMark. Following the return of feedback, assessors will also be available for one-to-one discussion meetings with students.