Program Overview

MSc/PgDip/PgCert Health History

The MSc in Health History is a research-led postgraduate programme that introduces students to a range of issues, controversies, debates, and specialist topics in the history of health and medicine. It provides specialist modules taught by experts in the field, a sources and methods module that engages with both practical and intellectual issues in the history of medicine and of health and healthcare, and the opportunity to carry out an extended piece of original historical research and writing in the form of a dissertation.

Key Facts

• Start date: September
• Study mode and duration:
  • MSc: 12 months full-time; 24 months part-time
  • PgDip: 9 months full-time; 18 months part-time
  • PgCert: 8 months part-time

What You'll Study

In your first semester, you will take the core module, Research Skills, Sources & Methods for Historians, as well as two specialist modules of your choosing. The core module equips you with the skills you need to conduct your own research as well as grounding you in the different methodologies and approaches to history. In your second semester, you will take the core Dissertation Preparation module and an additional two specialist modules of your choosing.

Optional Classes

• Advanced Oral History: Explores advanced oral history theory and practices as a valuable means of understanding the past.
• Organic Machines, Engineered Environments and Hybrid Natures: Examines the co-production of industrial civilization and the environment in multiple contexts.
• Pharmaceuticals, Ethics and Health: Analyses core debates in the History of Pharmaceutical Science and the History of the Pharmaceutical Industry.
• Governing Highs & Health: History & the Control of Drugs, c. 1800: Examines key moments in the development of modern systems of regulating drugs.
• Medicine and Warfare: Analyses the role of medicine in the emergence of ‘modern’ forms of warfare.
• Food and Health in the West during the 20th Century: Explores how dietary influences on health have been perceived in the West during the 20th century.
• Gender, Health and Modern Medicine Since 1800: Explores the complex interactions between medicine, gender, health, and illness in the 19th and 20th centuries.
• Work Placement in History: Designed to help students reflect on the subject-specific and transferable skills they have acquired through their academic journey.
• Fleshy Histories: Meat Eating & Meat Avoidance, 1500 to the Present: Engages students with literary and historical materials, and with theoretical work from animal studies and ecofeminism.
• Mad World: The Politics of Health in the Twentieth Century: Explores how questions relating to mental health and healthcare became contentious political issues in the twentieth century.
• Media & Health: Examines the potential and limits of the media to accomplish health education of the public.
• No Matter How Small: Children’s Health Across The British World: Explores themes and concepts around children’s health across the time and space of the British Empire.

Dissertation

The dissertation is an exercise in independent study. You will research a topic of your choice, under the supervision of an expert member of the programme staff. You will make full use of primary and secondary source material, including the identification and use of relevant archival holdings.

Entry Requirements

• Academic Requirements: First or second-class Honours degree, or overseas equivalent, in History or a related discipline.
• English language requirements: Please check the English requirements before making your application.

Fees & Funding

• Mlitt or MSc:
  • Full-time: £9,550
  • Part-time: £4,775
• PgDip: £6,367
• PGCert: £3,183
• International students:
  • Mlitt or MSc: £21,550
  • PgDip: £14,637

Scholarships

• EU Engagement Scholarships are available to EU applicants who would have previously been eligible for Home (Scottish/EU) fee status.
• A tuition fee reduction of 25% for NHS employees is offered by the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences.