The course offers two thematic strands in which students specialise: British local and regional history and Global history. You will specialise in one of these two themes, studying taught modules and undertaking original research, culminating in a dissertation of 16,000 - 20,000 words. Applicants should have a developed research proposal based on an aspect of either British local and regional history or Global history.
The MSt is taught over two years in short, intensive study blocks, and begins in September 2020 (Michaelmas Term). It has been designed to be accessible to those in full- or part-time employment and to international students.
Successful applicants will become members of a Cambridge College and will join the wider graduate community, with full access to the facilities of the University.
Aims of the programme
By the end of the course students should have:
- developed an understanding of, and ability to apply critically, the main academic theories and concepts underpinning the study of history;
- extended and developed their analytical, evaluative and critical capacities;
- developed the ability to form independent judgements based on their reading, research and writing;
- demonstrable specific subject knowledge and analysis relevant to their dissertation;
- developed research skills required for further postgraduate research.
Teaching and learning
The MSt is structured around four residential modules that students must attend. All students take modules 1 and 3 together; modules 2 and 4 are subject pathway modules. In the first year, each of the four residential blocks is preceded by guided preparatory reading.
A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) offers learning support to students while they are on the programme, including learning resources, peer-to-peer and student-to-tutor discussion between modules, to build a virtual community of practice. Students are expected to have sufficient IT skills to engage with the VLE and all assignments are uploaded to the VLE for assessment.
Year 1
The taught elements of the syllabus are offered during Year 1 in four intensive study blocks, each of which is examined by an assessed essay of 4,000 words maximum. Sessions are offered in research training, and essay and dissertation writing. Teaching methods combine informal lectures and class discussion, the study of primary sources, and student-led peer-to-peer learning.
British local and regional history includes the study of local communities and regions in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Units of analysis might include the family, the street, the neighbourhood, the parish, the town or city, the poor law union, the county, and the wider region. British local and regional history embraces rural and urban history. Local historians use a wide range of methods, but there is an emphasis upon local documentary evidence. Many of the themes of this course can be explored via local history, such as gender, race, religion, class and social status, and culture.
Global history combines close, textured area studies of Asia, Africa, the Pacific, the Americas and the Middle East with comparative and connected histories that link localities, states and empires to wider narratives of change. This approach, centring global structures and processes but also individuals and local spaces, brings depth and specificity to histories of convergences and divergences. Cambridge has been at the forefront of movements to rethink imperial and colonial impact and legacies, and to trace how concepts such as empire, modernity, nationalism were understood, experienced, and challenged, from the early modern period to the present day.
Scholars using a world history approach have focused not only on a broader geographic frame, but also on rethinking ‘regions’ beyond national borders (‘the Atlantic world’, ‘the Indian ocean’, the Sinophone world), unpacking environmental histories, and studying religions, gender, ideas, sciences and migrations. World historians at Cambridge have contributed to new ‘global intellectual histories’ as well as to new understandings of identity, citizenship, political movements, monarchy and empire. The world history pathway will allow students to gain experience with a wide range of world history research and teaching, from new approaches to Chinese history to rethinking the role of religion in colonial encounters.
Module 1: Theory, concepts and historiography (Tuesday 29 September – Friday 2 October 2020)
The induction day includes an introduction to the course and tours of the University and Seeley History libraries. Topics might include the Annales School, international history, gender, feudalism, race, class and social status, nations and states, religion.
Module 2: (Wednesday 2 – Friday 4 December 2020)
a) British local and regional history
Topics might include approaches to local history, manors and tour of medieval Cambridge, the parish, early modern culture, religion and belief, urban history, consumption, family and household.
OR
b) Global history
Topics might include approaches to global history, islands and oceanic histories, global histories of migration, global microhistories, transnational lives, encounters, material lives, Latin American and African case studies.
Module 3: Sources, methods and research skills (Wednesday 17 – Friday 19 February 2021)
Topics might include using library resources and archives, the census, microhistory, sources for early modern history, IT for historians practical, quantitative history, oral history, revolutions, anthropology and history.
Module 4: (Wednesday 19 – Friday 21 May 2021)
a) British local and regional history
Poverty, disease and medicine, 1601-1914: topics might include disease, death and doctors, plague and venereal disease, urban mortality, the Old Poor Law and charity, the New Poor Law, charity and the state, workhouse medicine and mortality, smallpox, childbirth, midwifery and the man-midwife, mutual aid and self-help, the ‘professionalisation’ of medicine.
OR
b) Global history
Topics might include the global contexts of gender and the history of books, African decolonisation, Japanese and South Asian case studies, the uneven development of industrialisation, piracy, the British Empire and Islam.
Please note that the content of all modules is indicative and may be subject to change.
Year 2
The second year is characterised by focus on the dissertation. Students will work independently on their chosen topic under the supervision of an expert in their chosen field with whom they will have regular contact. Students will be required to attend five supervisions between May 2021 and May 2022, at least three of which must be face-to-face and two of which can be online.
There will also be three day-schools at Madingley Hall, at which students provide short presentations on their research to date and at which there is some research training:
- Saturday 23 October 2021
- Saturday 15 January 2022
- Saturday 30 April 2022
Contact time
Lectures, seminars and classes: c.75 hours in Year 1 (including some reading/prep time), c.18 hours in Year 2.
- Supervision: 5 x 1-hour sessions in Year 2.
Assessment
Thesis
A dissertation of 16,000-20,000 words (including appendices, but excluding bibliography and footnotes).
Essays, projects and other written work
- Four essay assignments, each of 4,000 words maximum.
Some assignments and the dissertation require literature reviews.
Feedback
Students are given formal feedback on their assignments and informal feedback throughout their course, including during supervisions. Supervisions also result in an annual progress report at the end of Year 1 and termly reports during Year 2.
Find out more
If you would like academic guidance on your research topic before making an application, please contact the Course Director Dr Samantha Williams at skw30@cam.ac.uk.
