The Centre for English Local History

MA by Individual Supervised Study

Aim of the Course

This degree is to provide a route to an MA with the aim of catering for students who:

• live too far from Leicester to attend the conventional MA taught course;
• live locally but cannot make the weekly classes at the set times;
• wish to take a taught course with a strong emphasis on the dissertation.

The purpose of this course is to provide a course in Local History, which would emphasize landscape history and chronologically earlier elements in local history.

The taught elements would provide students with an introduction to the approaches, concepts and methods of local history sufficient to enable them to write a lengthy supervised dissertation.

It is designed for students with a first degree in archaeology, geography or history, but qualifications in other subjects would be considered.

Assessed elements

1. Field course. 30 credits.

Introduction to the topography, landscape history, society and culture of an English county. Students learn approaches to landscape history, methods of analysis of landscapes and buildings. They compare the county studied with another county in order to define the characteristics of the county studied. One week’s attendance at a residential field course, away from Leicester.

225 hours of learning, consisting of 50 hours of participation in tutorials / seminars / fieldwork, and 175 hours of private study.

Assessment by means of an evaluation of 7,500 words.

2. Intensive residential course on methods and principles of local history. 30 credits.

The MA by ISS begins with one week's attendance at a residential course in Leicester in late July.

The tuition will give students a grounding in the key methods and concepts necessary to write a dissertation in Local History. This will include bibliographical orientation, approaches to landscape, approaches to social history, use of sources etc.

Training in palaeography is already available on line.

225 hours of learning, consisting of 30 hours of seminars and tutorials, and 195 hours of private study.

Assessment by means of a three-day examination, taken three months after the course (a three-day examination is one in which the student collects the paper on one day, and returns the answers within 72 hours. The actual writing of the answers should take 3- 4 hours).

3. Dissertation.  120 credits.

35,000 words, researched and written over a period of 9 months, with supervision.

900 hours of learning, consisting of 15 hours of consultation/supervision, and 885 hours of private study.

Those students taking the course by full time study would either take module 1 in April , module 2 in July, and complete the dissertation on August 15 following, or take module 2 in July, and module 1 in the following April, and complete the dissertation by October 1.  

Students taking the course part time would take modules 1 and 2 in successive years.

Module 1 is a modified version of an existing module, and students taking the MA by Individual Supervised Study would take the course alongside those taking the MA in English Local History.

Module 2 is a module devised for this course.

Availability of the degree would depend on sufficient numbers having registered.

Entry requirements

Normally a first or second class honours degree in an appropriate subject from a British University or the CNAA or the equivalent from overseas. In some cases, you may be able to qualify through passing a qualifying test to first degree standard (e.g. a number of 'long essays'). Full-time students wishing to apply for a British Academy grant should contact the Centre by March 1st.

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