Heritage Management

You’ll explore how heritage sites are managed, presented and explained. We’ll teach you to consider their value beyond something to see or a place to visit.

What challenges are heritage bodies currently facing? What choices do they make in dealing with them? How will pressures on public funding for heritage in the UK – and further afield – shape our experience of visiting and working in museums and heritage sites in the future? And how will our wider understanding of heritage change as a result?

Trying to answer such questions provides a framework for practical work in the sector, underpinned by hands-on, supportive teaching. We want you to become involved in a range of projects, working with our extensive range of partners, and to gain experience on the ground.

Trimester one provides the foundation for your subsequent study. We'll explore changing and contested ideas about the nature of heritage, examine the social, political, and economic context in which heritage is defined and managed, and consider the best of current practice through a series of workshops. These are led by some of the best professionals in the sector, many of whom will continue to offer you support and advice.

Trimester two tests how far your thinking has developed. You'll plan and undertake an independent research project, which allows you to ask key questions about an aspect of current practice that most inspires or concerns you. In parallel with this, you will complete a 25-day placement with one of our many partners in the sector.

Trimester three marks the culmination of your studies, the chance to complete an extended piece of research through a dissertation or to design and deliver a new project in collaboration with a heritage site, museum, archive or community group, or to work with artists and teachers, health professionals and developers.

Part-time students follow the same sequence of modules, but do so over two years, working from theory to practice and assessing both in relation to one another.

This course includes or offers the following modules. Please check the programme document for more information on which modules are core, required or optional.

• Contextualising Heritage
• Heritage Management
• Placement
• Heritage in Practice
• Heritage Project
• Dissertation
• The Country House in Context
• Cultural Landscapes

You’ll be assessed through a mix of project work, formal essays, reports and a final dissertation or project. For a final project you could produce a film, develop a website, or prepare learning materials. Alternatively, a more traditional dissertation might lead you to further research and a PhD.

We deliver much of the course through intensive workshops, often run by leaders in their own field in the heritage sector. These are complemented by guest lectures, offering you the chance to become involved in thinking about major heritage issues as they develop, and by the sessions which you run for the group, as you develop your own expertise.

We pose challenging questions about our thinking and practice, and offer students the opportunity to explore this through a series of practical projects, working in partnership with a wide range of heritage organisations across Bath, the region, and beyond.

To find out more about how we teach and how you'll learn, please read our Learning and Teaching Delivery Statement.

We offer an optional exchange visit with Claremont Graduate University, comprising a week’s study here and in California, usually in June and July. The visit is an opportunity to test all your ideas about how heritage works, in a very different setting, and to explore some important areas of difference and perhaps surprising similarity.

We make extensive use of the extraordinary heritage of the city of Bath and the surrounding area. There are two World Heritage Sites on our doorstep - the iconic landscape of Stonehenge and Avebury, and Bath itself - and some of the most innovative organisations in the field.

We work closely with organisations such as the Bath Preservation Trust, the Holburne Museum, and Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, and we have links and partnerships with bodies throughout the region, nationally and internationally.

Our students have completed projects with, among others, English Heritage, the National Trust, the World Heritage Sites at Avebury and the City of Bath, Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, M Shed in Bristol, HMS Victory, SS Great Britain, the Roman Baths Museum and the Churches Conservation Trust. They have also worked with smaller, more informal organisations, where much of the most exciting contemporary practice develops.

Careers in the heritage sector include:

• Collections management
• Education and learning
• Exhibition planning and implementation
• Community engagement and outreach
• Marketing and fundraising
• Operational management
• Events planning
• Retail and visitor services.

The course includes a range of skills and opportunities aimed at those interested in the voluntary sector, social enterprises, fundraising, and a wide range of administrative and management roles.

Some of our graduates go on to complete postgraduate research, and we have a growing cohort of PhD students working in the field of heritage studies.

• Our Newton Park campus
• Other venues – museums, sites, archives
• Our Virtual Learning Environment.

MA Heritage Management students can hire out equipment using SISO, Bath Spa University’s free equipment loan service. We provide a huge variety of equipment, from cameras to laptops.