The Centre for English Local History

Research Degrees

The Centre currently has research students studying a great variety of topics over a wide variety of timescales, from Anglo-Saxon settlement through parliamentary enclosure to religious change in nineteenth-century England and Wales, Victorian suburbs, and the oral history of women's employment in a Midlands town in the twentieth century. Because of the unique brief of the Centre, there are really no clear disciplinary boundaries as to what can be studied, as can be seen from the wide range of staff research interests (see individual staff pages) and theses already undertaken:

• Recent theses and theses in progress

The Centre offers wide-ranging opportunities for those wishing to read for the degree of MPhil or PhD. It lays stress on the ease of access to supervisors, regular extended discussions of thesis planning and written work, and an annual self-assessment of progress. In addition the Centre's full-length monograph series, Communities, Contexts and Cultures: Leicester Studies in English Local History, and the shorter-text series Explorations in Local History provide a potential publishing outlet.

The University Library houses an exceptional local history collection (arguably the fullest outside Oxford, Cambridge, and London) covering all counties of England and Wales, and includes not only recent publications but also volumes dating back to the sixteenth century. The holding, together with the Marc Fitch Fund Library, makes Leicester unique among provincial English Universities for the comprehensiveness of its holdings in local history.

Intending students may apply for an Arts and Humanities Research Council award. When last assessed as an autonomous department, the Centre gained a '5' rating in the national Research Assessment Exercise - university departments rated '5' are at the top of the rankings.

Funding and advice

Advice for those studying for postgraduate degrees by research is available from the University Graduate Office.

• More Information about the Centre
• Printable Application Form