Lancaster University’s research specialisms cover a broad range of historical periods and geographies, and we are recognised experts in training future historians. You will explore how historical scholarship impacts the real world, from informing government policy to courtroom advocacy; how it shapes public understanding of the past, and how big historical themes play out across the centuries and around the world.
With advanced knowledge and skills, you'll be ready to launch a standout career, whether as a professional historian or in a wide range of exciting fields
Why Lancaster?
Focus on medieval, early modern or modern history and gain insights on topics ranging from environment to war, health, and heritage
Hone your specialist skills - finding and interpreting primary sources, working with archive materials, evaluating evidence, and writing for a range of audiences
See behind the scenes of the historical profession and learn how historians have an impact on real world challenges
Pursue your own historical investigation, discovering new evidence and forgotten stories
Take your skills into a range of exciting careers or progress to doctoral study
Why the past matters
On this challenging master's programme, you will explore the many ways in which historical research, knowledge and skills have an impact. You will learn how to apply your historical craft to real-world challenges. Developing cross-chronological insights and global perspectives on the past, you will explore the significance of important historical themes - including changes in environment and climate; the relationship between war, health and society; and the preservation and promotion of histories through the heritage industry.
You will discover how public understanding of the past is shaped through exhibitions, historical fiction and gaming, trade publishing and documentaries, and you’ll build your fluency and confidence in communicating with a range of audiences. In short, you’ll develop the ability to make your own contribution to our knowledge of the past.
Becoming a historian
Our expert historians will lead you behind the scenes of the historical profession and train you in the specialist techniques needed to undertake original research and engage with debates at the forefront of the discipline.
You will discover how and why historians disagree with their peers and predecessors, and how they frame their findings as significant. Meanwhile, you will develop the historian’s essential skill: finding and interpretating primary sources.
You’ll also hone your skills in academic history at an advanced level: how to explore an archive and develop your research topic, how to assess the research of other historians in book reviews, and how to write for academic audiences and respond to peer review.
Follow your interests
You can choose to focus on medieval, early modern or modern history, honing the high-level skills you need to investigate a historical topic that fascinates you.
You will make your mark as a historian in your dissertation. Under the guidance of an expert supervisor, you’ll put into practice your advanced skills in research, handling primary sources and critical thinking to illuminate old controversies or uncover stories that previous historians have missed. Build expertise in a topic that enthralls you, experience the thrill of making discoveries as you piece together the past, and learn to communicate what you have found effectively.
We offer the option to take up the study of languages – an option which opens the door to new historical sources, as well as enhancing your career possibilities. You can begin or continue to study a foreign language, from Latin (if your interest lies in medieval history) to modern French, German, Italian, Spanish or Chinese.
This MA equips you with the high-level skills in analysis, research and communication that are ideal for a wide range of roles in private and public sector organisations. Alternatively, you will be equipped to progress to higher level postgraduate research and a PhD.
Graduates of this course go on to careers in fields such as:
Project management
Cultural heritage management
Galleries, museums and archives
Research analysis
Geographic information systems
Digital librarianship
You’ll be in a strong position to continue your studies at doctoral level, and many of our graduates have secured funded PhDs. Postgraduate study is a great opportunity to further your research and deepen your historical expertise in a specific area.
Careers and employability support
Our degrees open up an extremely wide array of career pathways in businesses and organisations, large and small, in the UK and overseas. Our specialist Employability team is ready to support you, whether you are starting out your career after leaving higher education or returning to university to open up new career options.
We provide individual employability advice, application support, career events, development opportunities and resources to help you plan and achieve your career goals. We also run a paid internship scheme specifically for arts, humanities and social sciences students.
The Lancaster Award is available to all postgraduate taught students and recognises work experience, volunteering and personal development alongside your studies. Developed with employers, it helps you reflect on key skills, boost your CV and articulate your strengths with confidence.
Whether you have a clear idea of your potential career path or need some help considering the options, our friendly team is on hand.
Find out more about Lancaster’s careers events, extensive resources and personal support for Careers and Employability
Entry requirements
Academic requirements
2:2 Hons degree (UK or equivalent) in History, a related combined major or a degree in other related humanities disciplines.
English language requirements
We require an IELTS (Academic) Test with an overall score of at least 6.5, and a minimum of 6.0 in each element of the test.
If you are thinking of applying to Lancaster and you would like to ask us a question, complete our enquiry form and one of the team will get back to you.
Delivered in partnership with INTO Lancaster University, our one-year tailored pre-master's pathways are designed to improve your subject knowledge and English language skills to the level required by a range of Lancaster University master's degrees. Visit INTO Lancaster University for more details and a list of eligible degrees you can progress onto.
Course structure
We continually review and enhance our curriculum to ensure we are delivering the best possible learning experience, and to make sure that the subject knowledge and transferable skills you develop will prepare you for your future. The University will make every reasonable effort to offer programmes and modules as advertised. In some cases, changes may be necessary and may result in new modules or some modules and combinations being unavailable, for example as a result of student feedback, timetabling, Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' (PSRB) requirements, staff changes and new research. Not all optional modules are available every year.
Core
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In this module, you will progress from the fundamentals of historical research to the expert skills needed for your master's dissertation and for further research. You will develop the techniques used by professional historians, not only in undertaking research, but also in guiding research through peer review towards publication.
The module will follow the key steps in the production and dissemination of historical research, examining such topics as:
Working with archival sources
The nature of your field and identifying the key players in it
Devising and honing your research questions
The requirements for academic writing
Offering and responding to peer review
Presenting the strengths and weaknesses of research to specialist audiences in formats such as book reviews
The dilemmas posed by artificial intelligence
Through a series of workshops, lecturers draw on their own experiences and yours to guide you through the processes of research, writing and dissemination.
How can your research make a difference to the world? In this module, you will learn to bridge the gap between scholarly research and societal impact, developing the skills to contribute to policy debates and shape public understanding of the past.
Through task-based workshop activities, you will address the many faces of public history, including topics such as:
Museum exhibitions
Creative writing and historical fiction
History podcasting
Content creation
Trade publishing
Video games
Television and film consultancy
Policy papers
Courtroom advocacy
Moreover, you will develop a broader understanding of the place of history in the public sphere, for instance by reflecting on how to identify social problems that can be addressed through historical research, or by learning how to approach policymakers with research-based solutions. You will also develop the skills to reach varied audiences, deploying different styles of writing and diverse forms of communication.
The dissertation module is the culmination of your masters journey – a chance to make your mark as an independent historian.Take a deep dive into a topic of your choice, uncovering stories that time forgot or shedding new light on old controversies.
With one-to-one support from an experienced supervisor, you will hone your ability to work with primary source material, engage with the field, and construct powerful arguments that bring the past to life.
Whatever your area of study, this module gives you the freedom to follow your curiosity wherever it leads. You will develop key skills in critical thinking, problem solving, and persuasive writing – qualities valued far beyond academia. Most importantly, you will experience the thrill of original discovery, piecing together the past like a detective, and – in writing your dissertation – making your own contribution to our understanding of the world.
This module supports your journey as a professional historian by developing the specialist skills you need to interpret primary sources. Choose from one of three historical periods – medieval, early modern, and modern – and be guided by period experts to develop systematic knowledge of sources relevant to your research, exploring their genre, origins, authorship and audience.
You will engage with the methodologies that historians use to choose and interrogate those sources, and in some cases the ethical considerations arising from them. You’ll build towards a comprehensive understanding of the techniques needed to analyse these at an advanced level. Through this module, you will learn how to ask probing questions about historical sources and to draw the greatest possible value from them, developing the confidence to work with the primary sources central to research throughout your masters.
What does it mean to be at the forefront of a discipline? This module takes you inside the world of professional historians. Together, we will ask what it means to make an original contribution to historical knowledge, and how historians contest the significance of their research.
Working collaboratively in a workshop format, you will ask open-ended questions about the discipline of history, exploring the conceptual, methodological, and political reasons for agreement and disagreement in historical research. You will consider the role of such factors as the politics of the archive, contemporary concerns and individual positionality in giving rise to historical arguments.
Our aim, in other words, is to lift the veil on historical practice, giving you the opportunity to engage with other historians and their arguments at a high level. You will develop your understanding of the discipline of history and your potential role within it.
Optional
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While histories of war have long focused on the causes, course, outcome, and legacies of conflict, ‘new’ military histories also now seek to understand how ordinary people have experienced war ‘from below’.
Structured around four broad themes—medicine, the body, sexuality, and the mind—this module considers the bodily legacies of warfare in a variety of times and places.
Topics typically include:
The role of the military in the emergence of clinical medicine in the 18th century
The impact of war disability on society following the American Civil War
The long history of rape as a ‘weapon of war’
The use of methamphetamines by the German Wehrmacht in the Second World War
Drawing on a large range of sources, including diaries, memoirs, medical texts, engravings, photographs, and wartime propaganda, you will develop a detailed understanding of how people throughout history have experienced conflict and its aftermaths through their bodies.
Heritage is a complex concept. It is a way of describing things, places and practices that bring people together. It can also set people apart. In this module, we interrogate these aspects of heritage and examine different contexts and spaces in which heritage is created, claimed, mediated and debated.
You will engage with critical analyses of heritage practices and consider the workings of heritage groups and institutions. Questions we explore may include:
Where does heritage come from?
How is it created and defined?
What is national/world heritage?
What risks are involved in the documentation, preservation and promotion of heritage?
How/why has the presentation of heritage changed over time?
In thinking through these and other questions, you will have the chance to deepen your understanding of the means through which the historical temper is cultivated in public institutions and spaces.
The period from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century was marked by global wars. In this module you will examine wars and conflicts spanning a variety of world regions, from late colonial wars to the First and Second World Wars and the counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Working at the forefront of historiographical advances, you will study the origins, causes, course, impact, and resolution of these conflicts from global, regional, and local perspectives, drawing extensively on a wide range of primary sources.
Moving beyond Western- and military-centric narratives, you will investigate actors from both the ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’, as well as the political, economic, social, ideological, and cultural ramifications and legacies of war. This approach provides you with a multidimensional understanding of war and enables you to situate contemporary conflicts within the historical context of the long twentieth century.
Explore the complex relationship between people and the environment from the Middle Ages to the present. This module examines how humans have shaped ecosystems and vice versa to offer new perspectives on crucial historical developments, such as:
Climate change
Landscape changes
Animal diplomacy
Resource depletion
Industrialization
Colonization
Environmentalism
The module is organized around case studies that span Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia, and so you will gain an appreciation of the natural world’s historic diversity, as well as the ways that differing peoples across history have understood, exploited, and preserved the environment.
In addition to investigating historical phenomena that have profound contemporary relevance, you will also read deeply in the vibrant field of environmental history. You’ll emerge from this module with a nuanced understanding of how humans have altered the environment, the importance of the environment for shaping world history, and the ways that historians have studied environmental history.
Study a language formally in a way that will support your learning. You can enrol either as a beginner or as a more advanced student where you will build on existing knowledge.
In the seminars and workshops, as well as through a series of optional drop-ins offered later in the module, you’ll get the tools you need to approach materials which are relevant to your own academic and work interests.
You will be given opportunities to practise in your chosen target language, building on materials posted on the learning space (flipped classroom videos, self-study links) as well as other events organised for the community of linguists and language learners in the University, such as our weekly lunch clubs.
On this module you will develop transferable communicative skills and reflect on cultural and linguistic challenges which are relevant to your postgraduate studies and beyond.
You may use these skills to research matters relating to intercultural and/or interlinguistic issues, work with archives, develop an international research network, or simply add them to your CV.
What is ‘modern’ about modern history? What are the social, cultural, and political transformations that brought about ‘modernity’? And how is the experience of living in an age of modernity different from pre-modernity? This module explores some of the most influential theories and approaches that will help you answer these questions.
Through a series of case studies, you will examine how capitalism, colonialism, secularisation, urbanisation, and technology have reshaped people’s identities, remoulded institutions, and fashioned new ideologies. You will investigate the key features of mass society, from advertising and propaganda to cinema-going and commuting. And you will learn how modernity is also about the accommodations made between the old and the new, the personal and the impersonal. Finally, the module asks whether we are now ‘postmodern’ – and if so, what this means – or whether contemporary society is still part of the modern era.
This module challenges you to understand the transnational forces shaping the emergence of racial thinking and racist practices. You’ll learn how these developed around, and resulted from, justifications for the enslavement of millions of women, men, and children of various cultures across the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
You will acquire a global perspective on the history of race and slavery – historical phenomena that have profoundly shaped the modern world from across the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and beyond. You will develop experience of critical engagement with primary sources (including those left by enslavers and the enslaved) and achieve command of a series of longstanding historiographical challenges, including debates around the complex dynamics concerning causative connections between race and slavery.
Explore a crucial period in the history of warfare, from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, when episodic conflicts gave way to continual war. In Europe, ‘chivalric’ ideals were first established to limit noble bloodshed and then overturned, especially in the Hundred Years War. Western crusaders conquered swathes of the Holy Land and led expeditions to North Africa, before the revanche of the Abode of Islam under the Ayyubids and then the Mamluks, while the Mongol Empire emerged to confront the powers of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Military technology was transformed, with the invention of the trebuchet and then the gun.
In this module, you will gain a global perspective on medieval warfare and develop advanced skills in analysing primary sources and evaluating the methods and arguments of historians, working to build your own interpretations.
Fees and funding
We set our fees on an annual basis and the 2026/27
entry fees have not yet been set.
Additional fees and funding information accordion
There may be extra costs related to your course for items such as books, stationery, printing, photocopying, binding and general subsistence on trips and visits. Following graduation, you may need to pay a subscription to a professional body for some chosen careers.
Specific additional costs for studying at Lancaster are listed below.
College fees
Lancaster is proud to be one of only a handful of UK universities to have a collegiate system. Every student belongs to a college, and all students pay a small College Membership Fee which supports the running of college events and activities. Students on some distance-learning courses are not liable to pay a college fee.
For students starting in 2025, the fee is £40 for undergraduates and research students and £15 for students on one-year courses.
Computer equipment and internet access
To support your studies, you will also require access to a computer, along with reliable internet access. You will be able to access a range of software and services from a Windows, Mac, Chromebook or Linux device. For certain degree programmes, you may need a specific device, or we may provide you with a laptop and appropriate software - details of which will be available on relevant programme pages. A dedicated IT support helpdesk is available in the event of any problems.
The University provides limited financial support to assist students who do not have the required IT equipment or broadband support in place.
Application fees for 2025
For most taught postgraduate programmes starting in 2025 you must pay a non-refundable application fee of £40. We cannot consider applications until this fee has been paid, as advised on our online secure payment system. There is no application fee for postgraduate research applications.
Application fees for 2026
There is no application fee if you are applying for postgraduate study starting in 2026.
Paying a deposit
For some of our courses you will need to pay a deposit to accept your offer and secure your place. We will let you know in your offer letter if a deposit is required and you will be given a deadline date when this is due to be paid.
The fee that you pay will depend on whether you are considered to be a home or international student. Read more about how we assign your fee status.
If you are studying on a programme of more than one year’s duration, tuition fees are reviewed annually and are not fixed for the duration of your studies. Read more about fees in subsequent years.
Details of our scholarships and bursaries for 2026-entry study are not yet available, but you can use our opportunities for 2025-entry applicants as guidance.
The information on this site relates primarily to the stated entry year and every effort has been taken to ensure the information is correct at the time of publication.
The University will use all reasonable effort to deliver the courses as described, but the University reserves the right to make changes to advertised courses. In exceptional circumstances that are beyond the University’s reasonable control (Force Majeure Events), we may need to amend the programmes and provision advertised. In this event, the University will take reasonable steps to minimise the disruption to your studies. If a course is withdrawn or if there are any fundamental changes to your course, we will give you reasonable notice and you will be entitled to request that you are considered for an alternative course or withdraw your application. You are advised to revisit our website for up-to-date course information before you submit your application.
More information on limits to the University’s liability can be found in our legal information.
Our Students’ Charter
We believe in the importance of a strong and productive partnership between our students and staff. In order to ensure your time at Lancaster is a positive experience we have worked with the Students’ Union to articulate this relationship and the standards to which the University and its students aspire. Find out more about our Charter and student policies.