MPhil in History (Modern British History 1850-present)

University of Oxford

The MPhil in History (Modern British History 1850-present) allows for the study of British political and intellectual history in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, especially a broad view of political culture and the social and cultural history of the period.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. The Modern British History group at Oxford has particular strengths in the history of women, the history of architecture, and the history of childhood, with outstanding print and digital resources of the Bodleian Library and important Special Collections, including the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera and the Conservative Party archive.There are several faculty research seminars focusing principally on the period and TORCH networks that bring historians of the period into conversation with scholars from other disciplines.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.