MPhil in History (Medieval History)

University of Oxford

The MPhil in History (Medieval) offers a unique balance of breadth and depth in studying the medieval history of Britain and Europe.

The MPhil has a sustained period devoted to archival research and writing, and is designed to give you a thorough training in historical research, improve your ability to conceptualise and engage with historical problems, and enlarge your understanding of the historical and historiographical context in which your own research is set. The course can serve as either a free-standing graduate qualification, or as a springboard to doctoral study. Students wishing to proceed to doctoral study will be encouraged to develop their doctoral proposals during the first few months of the second year. Skills training and option-choice are flexible and open-ended, to allow you to gain the knowledge and training needed to complete your research project.

You will have the opportunity to study a vast range of medieval history from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries, and from Ireland and Iran. The course is not proscriptive about what topics you choose to study, but instead insists on intellectual rigour and excitement, whatever your choices.

Oxford is home to a large community of medieval historians, with exceptional resources for study, including the largest university library collection of medieval manuscripts, as well as college collections of manuscripts and archives, and the fine holdings of the Ashmolean Museum. There are weekly Medieval History seminars, as well as inter-disciplinary seminars, workshops, and research projects.

You will take three compulsory core papers and two optional papers, as well as undertake an original research project. There is also a research masterclass, which is not assessed. This structure gives access to a wide range of both general and specialised training within the field of history.