History
Apply onlineHistory at Winchester concentrates on different geographical scales of history, including local and global perspectives. It gives you the opportunity to engage with a range of approaches to the study of history, examining a range of historical subjects from ancient history to the present.
Course overview
Start the course by exploring historical methods and research skills, followed by in-depth topic-based modules and the opportunity to devise and develop a specialist dissertation. The Approaches to the Past module, in the first semester, provides guidance on the different approaches to the study of history, including geographical scales of study and disciplinary approaches.
There are four core modules: Approaches to the Past, Research Methods and Skills, an Independent Study Presentation, and a dissertation. You also choose three special study modules from a varied list of options. Examples include The Fall of the Ancient City; Sport and Leisure in Victorian Britain; Medieval Queenship-Gender and Power in the Global Middle Ages; The ‘fifteen-year war’ and public memory in postwar Japan; Documenting the Local Past; The Organisation and Representation of Colonial Violence; and Church, Society, and Conflict in the Medieval West, c. 1000 - c. 1150. Please note that not all the Special Study options will run every year
During the final summer of studies you write a 20,000-word dissertation, with specialist supervision. Research training for the dissertation is provided in a specialist module through a blend of electronic learning and face-to-face contact, which helps you complete a range of research tasks associated with the development of your dissertation. This leads to a Day Conference (Independent Study Presentation), in which you showcase your dissertation plans and their development, and debate themes in the study of history with external speakers.
Find out more about the School of History, Archaeology and Philosophy
What you need to know
Course start date
September
Location
On campus, Winchester
Course length
- 1 year full-time
- 2 years part-time
Apply
Apply online
Typical offer
A first or upper second-class honours degree
Fees
From £9,550 pa
Course features
- Huge range of research possibilities
- Opportunities to discuss and debate key themes with visiting speakers
- Taught by highly respected and experienced researchers
Course details
Learning and teaching
Students attend lectures, seminars, workshops, tutorials, a day conference and excursions. The teaching team is made up of highly respected and experienced researchers.
Teaching takes place: Evenings, with some individual tutorials during the day, and one weekend in semester 2.
Location
Taught elements of the course take place on campus in Winchester.
Assessment
Assessment on the programme is largely by written assignments, usually a 4,000 word essay, and this applies to most modules. The dissertation is a substantial piece of independent research with full tutorial support. For this, students are required to write around 20,000 words on a subject of their choice covered by their study.
Our validated courses may adopt a range of means of assessing your learning. An indicative, and not necessarily comprehensive, list of assessment types you might encounter includes essays, portfolios, supervised independent work, or presentations.
We ensure all students have an equal opportunity to achieve module learning outcomes. As such, where appropriate and necessary, students with recognised disabilities may have alternative assignments set that continue to test how successfully they have met the module's learning outcomes. Further details on assessment types used on the course you are interested in can be found on the course page, by attending an Open Day or Open Evening, or contacting our teaching staff.
Feedback
We are committed to providing timely and appropriate feedback to you on your academic progress and achievement in order to enable you to reflect on your progress and plan your academic and skills development effectively. You are also encouraged to seek additional feedback from your course tutors.
Further information
For more information about our regulations for this course, please see our Academic Regulations, Policies and Procedures section.
Modules
Please note the modules listed are correct at the time of publishing. The University cannot guarantee the availability of all modules listed and modules may be subject to change. The University will notify applicants of any changes made to the core modules listed. For further information please refer to winchester.ac.uk/termsandconditions
Modules
This module examines modern approaches to historical studies and invites students to engage with a range of new perspectives – from the postmodern challenge to the history of everyday life. It will explore the factors influencing the shifting boundaries of History and consider historians’ increasing willingness to make use of insights and methodologies from other disciplines (psychology, sociology, anthropology, critical theory, gender studies etc.) in order to shed new light on already familiar historical questions and periods. At the same time students will also investigate both new types of source material and historians’ developing interests in hitherto neglected areas such as environmental history, memory studies or history of emotions. Prominent here will be an emphasis on the role of the local, regional, national and international approaches to the study of the past. The module will be taught both through theoretical exploration and through the use of practical case studies.
In addition to developing the particular knowledge relating to given field of investigation, postgraduate students need both to reflect on the nature of that discipline, to identify its place in the range of human areas of intellectual investigation, to identify particular methods and skills relevant to their discipline from a wide range of methods and skills, to develop those skills and to begin their implementation in a significant and agreed topic of research. Students also use information technology to create bibliographies, make appropriate use of online resources, and to access research materials; they explore appropriate modes of research-topic identification, hypothesis formation, and methodology selection; with the aim to develop a research proposal for their MA dissertation.
Students who have submitted an approval proposal for their dissertation undertake preliminary work on their chosen topic. They present critical reports on their progress in the semester after they have completed the Research Methodology module (HS7522). This module must be passed as a prerequisite for embarking on the dissertation but may also be taken as the end point of the Postgraduate Diploma.
The dissertation is the culmination of the MA in History and is designed to offer opportunities for research, study and reflection. By implementing a specially designed research strategy appropriate to the particular subject the student is expected to gain a comprehensive and insightful understanding of the specific topic and a clearer grasp of the disciplinary procedures of up-to-date historical studies.
Three Special Study modules from a list of options (please note that not all the Special Study modules will run every year):
- Religion and Society: the Secular Church of Late Medieval Wessex - 20 Credits
- The Rulers of the Late Medieval English Provinces - 20 Credits
- Poverty in the South of England 1770-1870 - 20 Credits
- Sport and Leisure in Victorian Britain - 20 Credits
- Normandy, c.900-1204 - 20 Credits
- Reading and Writing the Holocaust: Historiography, Memory and Representation 1945 to the Present - 20 Credits
- The ‘Good War’: the United States and WWII - 20 Credits
- The ‘fifteen-year war’ and public memory in postwar Japan - 20 Credits
- Soviet History through Film - 20 Credits
- The Organisation and Representation of Colonial Violence - 20 Credits
- Late Medieval Government - 20 Credits
- Tudor Rebellions - 20 Credits
- ‘Women Worthies’: The Study of Famous Females from Boccaccio to the Present Day - 20 Credits
- Documenting the Local Past - 20 Credits
- Transnational ideologies in action: liberalism, socialism and anarchism - 20 Credits
- Genocide Memory and Representation - 20 Credits
- Church, Society, and Conflict in the Medieval West, c. 1000 - c. 1150 - 20 Credits
- Anglo-Saxon Charters - 20 Credits
- The Fall of the Ancient City - 20 Credits
- Peace in the Ancient World - 20 Credits
- Thatcher’s Britain - 20 Credits
- The Lives of Greek and Roman Poets - 20 Credits
- Medieval Queenship-Gender and Power in the Global Middle Ages - 20 Credits
- A Lust for Liberty? Popular Protest in Medieval Europe, c. 1200 to c. 1500 - 20 Credits
- Pompeii: Life & Afterlife - 20 Credits
- Europe’s Military Revolutions, 1450-1700 - 20 Credits
- Writing ‘The Anarchy,’ 1135-1154 - 20 Credits
- The Hispanic-Anglosphere (18th-20th centuries) - 20 Credits
- The Unending Frontier? Environment, Enlightenment and Expansion in the Early Modern World (c. 1600-c.1900) - 20 Credits
- Early Medieval Wessex - 20 Credits
- Playing the Past: Analysing History through Games - 20 Credits
- Communicating the Past - 20 Credits
- Work Placement - 20 Credits
Optional
This module examines modern approaches to historical studies and invites students to engage with a range of new perspectives – from the postmodern challenge to the history of everyday life. It will explore the factors influencing the shifting boundaries of History and consider historians’ increasing willingness to make use of insights and methodologies from other disciplines (psychology, sociology, anthropology, critical theory, gender studies etc.) in order to shed new light on already familiar historical questions and periods. At the same time students will also investigate both new types of source material and historians’ developing interests in hitherto neglected areas such as environmental history, memory studies or history of emotions. Prominent here will be an emphasis on the role of the local, regional, national and international approaches to the study of the past. The module will be taught both through theoretical exploration and through the use of practical case studies.
In addition to developing the particular knowledge relating to given field of investigation, postgraduate students need both to reflect on the nature of that discipline, to identify its place in the range of human areas of intellectual investigation, to identify particular methods and skills relevant to their discipline from a wide range of methods and skills, to develop those skills and to begin their implementation in a significant and agreed topic of research. Students also use information technology to create bibliographies, make appropriate use of online resources, and to access research materials; they explore appropriate modes of research-topic identification, hypothesis formation, and methodology selection; with the aim to develop a research proposal for their MA dissertation.
Students who have submitted an approval proposal for their dissertation undertake preliminary work on their chosen topic. They present critical reports on their progress in the semester after they have completed the Research Methodology module (HS7522). This module must be passed as a prerequisite for embarking on the dissertation but may also be taken as the end point of the Postgraduate Diploma.
The dissertation is the culmination of the MA in History and is designed to offer opportunities for research, study and reflection. By implementing a specially designed research strategy appropriate to the particular subject the student is expected to gain a comprehensive and insightful understanding of the specific topic and a clearer grasp of the disciplinary procedures of up-to-date historical studies.
Three Special Study modules from a list of options (please note that not all the Special Study modules will run every year):
- Religion and Society: the Secular Church of Late Medieval Wessex - 20 Credits
- The Rulers of the Late Medieval English Provinces - 20 Credits
- Poverty in the South of England 1770-1870 - 20 Credits
- Sport and Leisure in Victorian Britain - 20 Credits
- Normandy, c.900-1204 - 20 Credits
- Reading and Writing the Holocaust: Historiography, Memory and Representation 1945 to the Present - 20 Credits
- The ‘Good War’: the United States and WWII - 20 Credits
- The ‘fifteen-year war’ and public memory in postwar Japan - 20 Credits
- Soviet History through Film - 20 Credits
- The Organisation and Representation of Colonial Violence - 20 Credits
- Late Medieval Government - 20 Credits
- Tudor Rebellions - 20 Credits
- ‘Women Worthies’: The Study of Famous Females from Boccaccio to the Present Day - 20 Credits
- Documenting the Local Past - 20 Credits
- Transnational ideologies in action: liberalism, socialism and anarchism - 20 Credits
- Genocide Memory and Representation - 20 Credits
- Church, Society, and Conflict in the Medieval West, c. 1000 - c. 1150 - 20 Credits
- Anglo-Saxon Charters - 20 Credits
- The Fall of the Ancient City - 20 Credits
- Peace in the Ancient World - 20 Credits
- Thatcher’s Britain - 20 Credits
- The Lives of Greek and Roman Poets - 20 Credits
- Medieval Queenship-Gender and Power in the Global Middle Ages - 20 Credits
- A Lust for Liberty? Popular Protest in Medieval Europe, c. 1200 to c. 1500 - 20 Credits
- Pompeii: Life & Afterlife - 20 Credits
- Europe’s Military Revolutions, 1450-1700 - 20 Credits
- Writing ‘The Anarchy,’ 1135-1154 - 20 Credits
- The Hispanic-Anglosphere (18th-20th centuries) - 20 Credits
- The Unending Frontier? Environment, Enlightenment and Expansion in the Early Modern World (c. 1600-c.1900) - 20 Credits
- Early Medieval Wessex - 20 Credits
- Playing the Past: Analysing History through Games - 20 Credits
- Communicating the Past - 20 Credits
- Work Placement - 20 Credits
Entry requirements
Normally a first or upper second-class Honours degree, or professional experience in the a related subject, or professional experience in the area of study. Applicants who do not have a first or upper second class honours degree may be interviewed in person, or by Skype.
If English is not your first language: IELTS 6.0 overall with a minimum of 5.5 in writing or equivalent
Course Enquiries and Applications
Normally a first or upper second-class Honours degree, or professional experience in the a related subject, or professional experience in the area of study. Applicants who do not have a first or upper second class honours degree may be interviewed in person, or by Skype.
If English is not your first language: IELTS 6.0 overall with a minimum of 5.5 in writing or equivalent
Late applications can be accepted throughout the remainder of the application year, for more information see our How to Apply section.
Course Enquiries and Applications
If you are living outside of the UK or Europe, you can find out more about how to join this course by emailing our International Recruitment Team at International@winchester.ac.uk.
2025/2026 Course Tuition Fees
| UK / Channel Islands / Isle of Man / Republic of Ireland |
International |
|
|---|---|---|
| Full-time | £9,550 | £17,450 |
| Part-time | £4,775 | £8,725 |
| Total | £9,550 | £17,450 |
Additional tuition fee information
If you are a UK student starting your degree in January / September 2025, the first year will cost you £9,550**.
If finance is a worry for you, we are here to help. Take a look at the range of support we have on offer. This is a great investment you are making in your future, so make sure you know what is on offer to support you.
**The University of Winchester will charge the maximum approved tuition fee per year.
Additional costs
As one of our students all of your teaching and assessments are included in your tuition fees, including, lectures/guest lectures and tutorials, seminars, laboratory sessions and specialist teaching facilities. You will also have access to a wide range of student support and IT services.
There might be additional costs you may encounter whilst studying. The following highlights the mandatory and optional costs for this course:
- Core and Special Studies modules might require some core texts. Copies will be available at the University Library, but students might wish to have their own copy.
- Dissertation work: Students working on dissertations may incur costs (mainly travel) of visiting archives, dependent upon the specific nature of the dissertation and availability of online resources for a specific subject. This would typically involve either travel to a local archive (e.g. Winchester, Southampton, Portsmouth or further afield if the student chooses to study a locality away from Winchester) or a national archive, usually in London (TNA, British Library, Women's Library, etc.). Many international archives have collections available online.
SCHOLARSHIPS, BURSARIES AND AWARDS
We have a variety of scholarship and bursaries available to support you financially with the cost of your course. To see if you’re eligible, please see our Scholarships and Awards.
CAREER PROSPECTS
Graduates of the course work in academia, teaching, archives, libraries, government and civil service, museums and conservation, as well as in a range of professions in the private sector, including financial consulting. The course provides a firm foundation for undertaking a postgraduate research degree or further training.
OUR CAREERS SERVICE
“The MSc programmes at Winchester provide you with an excellent foundation from which to pursue your career.”
