Course summary

The Middle Ages are all around us. They shape landscapes and cities across much of the world. The Middle Ages gave birth to at least five major world religions and saw the spread of belief systems across Afro-Eurasia. They are also politicised in media and popular culture from computer games to the daily news. The Leeds MA in Medieval Studies provides an environment to explore a variety of medieval topics and their modern significance through compulsory and optional modules, culminating in an independent research dissertation. You’ll be taught by experts who have specialist knowledge across a range of chronological and geographical topics, with specialisms in varied disciplines and ways of thinking about the past. The course takes advantage of the inter-disciplinary Institute for Medieval Studies to bring together experts from the Schools of History; Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies; English; and Languages, Cultures and Societies. It also draws on the extensive connections of the Institute with heritage institutions, sites and collections. Alongside the University of Leeds’ own fantastic medieval collections, the University also has an official collaboration with the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds, and long-established links with Ripon Cathedral, Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds City Museums & Galleries, and the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society. Additional highlights

• Enrolment on the course provides free entry to the Leeds International Medieval Congress, the largest international gathering for medieval studies in the world. This is an opportunity to meet and hear from scholars from all over the world on any area of medieval studies. You will be provided with guidance on how to make the most of this experience.

• The multi-disciplinary staffing and teaching of the course means modules and possibilities for supported dissertation research extend across the entire medieval period and beyond.

• The course embeds medieval collections and sites, and connections between the Institute for Medieval Studies and regional resources, into teaching. You're also able to use these resources in your own work.

• A focus on language, and language learning, as a core medievalist skill, is unique to this course. It can accommodate existing language knowledge and ability, offering training from beginner to advanced level in several languages. Language is treated as a core means of engaging with diversity in the medieval world and in medieval studies today, welcoming different perspectives and creating shared spaces for people whose main interests are linguistics. This course aims to make medieval studies a more welcoming, inclusive and critically aware field by transforming language learning.

• Staff in the Institute for Medieval Studies offer a wide range of expertise, which shapes modules and the dissertation supervision available. Current expertise includes specialists in Art History, History and a wide range of languages, including medieval forms of English.

• Within and across these disciplines, staff focus on varied approaches, including emphasis on textual, material and digital sources. They bring together cutting-edge research into legal, religious, military, medical, economic, embodied and spatial histories, and into Judaism, Christianity and Islam as well as the varied religions along the Silk Road.

• Staff research disabilities, gender, health and food, buildings, literatures, coins and cultures of learning. Few institutions, globally, can offer such a wide and varied range of approaches to the medieval world, while the Institute for Medieval Studies helps to break down traditional boundaries between university departments and fields.