Course summary

The information provided on this page was correct at the time of publication (November 2024). For complete and up-to-date information about this course, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas. This two-year part-time MSc course is designed to combine a systematic training in historical research techniques with the study of a range of major local historical themes and the chance to undertake an individually-researched dissertation. The MSc draws on knowledge and skills acquired in many years of providing specialist classes in local history, and profits from close links with local, social and economic historians elsewhere in the University. The course will be relevant to potential or practising teachers, archaeologists, environmental planners, archivists, librarians, museum professionals and teachers in adult education as well as to dedicated researchers pursuing the subject in its own right. The course is designed for your needs to study part-time, including if you are in full-time employment. Students have a two hour class once a week most terms and we estimate that they will normally require about ten hours a week for private study. At the start of the course, you will prepare for a qualifying test, which covers concepts and methods. You will also receive an introduction to research in local history. Teaching will comprise two compulsory topics on sources, methods and foundations of English local history, and two advanced topics, which are chosen from a range of specific themes in English local history. Current topics include: English Society, 900-1100; Riot and Rebellion, 1450 to 1650; Continuity and Change in Earl Modern English Rural Communities; Kinship, Culture and Community - Provincial Elites in Early Modern England; Medicine and Society in Early Modern England; Civil War and Society in the Seventeenth Century; Agricultural Revolution, Enclosure and the Impact on Rural Society, 1700-1870; The English Suburb, 1800-1939; The Social History of English Architecture, 1870-1940. (Please note the availability of these topics varies from year to year and depends on staffing)