MA History

For entry in the academic year beginning September 2027, the tuition fees are as follows:

• MA (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £14,400
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £29,800

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 unit explores the history of mental illness from the late eighteenth century to the present.  It examines how insanity has been understood, treated, and represented within larger social, cultural, and intellectual frameworks; it will also relate changing ideas about and approaches to mental illness, health, and functioning to larger questions in the history of the medical and biological sciences.  Our focus will be on developments in Britain, but with frequent reference to developments in Continental Europe and in North America. Topics include: the rise of the asylum in the 19th century; scientific and popular understandings of mental illness since 1800; race and gender in relation to mental illness; biological and surgical therapies; the relationship of psychiatry to the rest of medicine; discourses around mental health since the Second World War and the decline of the asylum.

• Provide students with an overview of the major changes in the understanding, management and meaning of mental illness from 1800 to the present;
• Help students to develop an understanding of how these changes have been approached and explained by historians and social scientists;
• Locate the changes in their broader social, cultural, intellectual, and political contexts;
• Consider how this history has shaped contemporary debates around mental health, psychiatry, and neuroscience;
• Develop facility in analysing and discussing relevant secondary literature and locating primary sources on the history of mental illness.

Intellectual skills

• Plaace understandings of the mind and approaches to mental illness in their historical contexts
• Understand secondary literature on the history of mental illness in their theoretical and historiographical contexts
• Critique approaches to mental illness based on an understanding of their history
• Identify potentially fruitful topics for research projects in the history of psychiatry and mental illness

Practical skills

• Place understandings of the mind and approaches to mental illness in their historical contexts
• Understand secondary literature on the history of mental illness in their theoretical and historiographical contexts
• Critique approaches to mental illness based on an understanding of their history
• Identify potentially fruitful topics for research projects in the history of psychiatry and mental illness

Transferable skills and personal qualities

• Discuss complex issues based on an understanding of their history
• Work independently on a research project
• Work effectively in a team, leading or following when appropriate, and contributing and listening

Detailed written feedback from primary assessor.