Course summary

Our MSc Historical Research (Economic and Social History) is designed specifically as training for the 1+3 funded PhD studentships in the ESRC Doctoral Training Programme. This specialist Master's degree will give you the advanced conceptual, theoretical and practical skills you need to undertake historical research, particularly statistical analysis, at an advanced level, professionally or for doctoral research. The course will equip you with an awareness of contemporary historical practice and an understanding of the methodologies used in the analysis and interpretation of historical documents and other primary and secondary source material. Highlights

• Birkbeck was ranked in the top eight universities in the UK for its History research in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework.

• Our research is unique in its range across geographical and chronological boundaries. We are the only university in London to include historians, classicists and archaeologists in the same team of academics investigating every period from prehistory to the early twenty-first century. We see the study of the past as crucial for our understanding of present-day society, culture and politics.

• We are at the heart of academic London with access to unparalleled research resources. Situated very close by are: the Institute of Classical Studies, with its library, training facilities and seminars; the British Museum, with its extensive collection of classical antiquities; and the British Library, the largest national library in the world.

• We are home to a number of affiliated research centres that actively run seminars, conferences and other events where some of the world's best scholars present their latest research. These include the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, the Raphael Samuel History Centre and the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.

• researcher

• archivist

• journalist

• higher education lecturer

• museum education officer

• Civil Service administrator.