Education: Primary and Early Years and History

We combine the academic study of history with skill-based modules to create our ‘hands-on’ History degree. You could find yourself learning to write a funding application for one of your modules, and sifting through primary sources at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre or Bath City Archives on another.

You’ll gain broad historical skills and expertise – how to read historical texts; how to use a wide range of historical sources; how to discuss and debate historical subjects. You’ll also learn to analyse, process information, make decisions, manage projects, network, collaborate, and work with experts inside and outside of the University.

You’ll graduate with a wide range of transferable personal and intellectual skills, relevant both to further academic study and to your career ambitions.

Year one
Develop a foundation of historical skills and expertise. At the heart of your first year are two core modules – the rest is up to you. For example, you might choose to study topics such as world heritage, archaeology, society, politics, war, gender, and popular culture in the modern world.

Year two
Start to specialise. You’ll extend your knowledge and build your confidence as you deal with new subjects and approaches. Underpinning this is the philosophy of History – how ideas about the past have changed over time, and how the study of history has influenced, and been influenced by, wider changes in society.

Year three
Focus on what inspires you. Your dissertation or final project is an important element of your third year. You’ll identify and develop your own historical question, conduct research, and prepare an extended piece of writing. New topics are offered through optional modules, such as political, social and cultural history, public history, and the impact of the past on the modern world.

We’ll assess your progress in a variety of ways including essays, research papers, group presentations, projects, portfolios, and reports. There are timed assessments and some modules will have end-of-year examinations.

Our assessment methods allow you to develop and demonstrate different skills. Many of these will help you in the workplace, for example: planning ahead, working to deadlines, and managing priorities.

You’ll get to grips with your subject through lectures, seminars, workshops, and individual tutorials.

You can take advantage of the learning support provided across the University, whether to develop your writing skills or to learn how to use new techniques and technologies.

• Europe and the World I
• Europe and the World II
• Atlantic Histories
• Disunited Kingdoms: society, politics and culture in Britain and Ireland
• Gender, identity and power: themes and approaches
• War and Popular Culture in the Modern World
• Heritage and Public History
• How to Think Together: HUmanities in the 21st Century

• Making History 1: Sources
• Making History 2: Discourses and Approaches
• The British Empire: from Opium Wars to Decolonisation
• Censorship, morality and freedom in British and American Popular Culture in the 20th Century
• An ungovernable people? Rights and Riot in a Historical Perspective
• Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe
• Ships, Slaves and Sugar: Britain and France in the Atlantic Trade
• Immigration and Race in 20th Century Europe
• Heritage Matters? People, Place and Politics
• Presenting the Past: Audience, Story, Media
• Professional Placement Year
• Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)

• Epoch of Chaos: A Global History of the 1970s
• History Project
• Islam: Faith, Politics and History
• Conflict and Community: Public History, Cultural Heritage and Global Politics
• Muslim Migration and Islam in Europe in a Historical Perspective
• Society, Culture and Consumption 1700-1900
• Secret Service: Intelligence and Espionage
• History Works: Placement Module

You’ll be able to make good use of opportunities to study abroad through our Erasmus+ and other international programmes within our network of partner universities, usually taken in your second year.

Depending on your module choices, you’ll visit Stonehenge, Avebury, Bristol Harbour, M-Shed, major national museums and galleries such as Oxford’s Ashmolean or the V&A, and hidden gems such as the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes or Dyrham Park, just outside Bath.

Linked to our teaching, trips change from year to year. But our location in the heart of the Bath and Bristol cultural area means you you can learn outside the seminar room. We have The Holburne Museum, Roman Baths and Brunel’s SS Great Britain right on our doorstep.

Placement modules prepare you for the world of work. We have an extensive network of partners across local, regional and national organisations, and can help you make the most of the opportunity to work with them.

You'll be able to work on projects with our partners in the city and region. This might involve research in a historic house, oral history projects, or devising public events and exhibitions. Through these projects, you’ll work collaboratively, manage your time, develop project management skills, and prepare for a future career.

If you’ve ever wondered what you can do with a History degree, the answer may surprise you. Yes, you could become a historian or a teacher, but we prepare you for so much more.

The transferable skills you’ll gain on this course will prepare you for a career that demands confident communication at all levels. This could include curation for museums and heritage organisations, or work in the public and social services, the charitable sector, or the NHS. You’ll be well-equipped for project management, education, and events management. You may also choose to continue your studies at postgraduate level.

Our graduates have gone into such areas as financial services, the police force, and management training schemes with major retailers, as well as worked for the National Trust, Bristol Old Vic and the Southbank Centre.

This optional placement year provides you with the opportunity to identify, apply for, and secure professional experience, normally comprising one to three placements over a minimum of nine months. Successful completion of this module will demonstrate your ability to secure and sustain graduate-level employment.

By completing the module, you'll be entitled to the addition of 'with Professional Placement Year' to your degree title.

Before your Professional Placement Year, you'll work to secure your placement, constructing a development plan with your module leader and your placement coordinator from our Careers and Employability team.

On your return to University for your final year, you'll submit your Placement Portfolio, detailing your development on your placement.

Our campus is a historic resource in its own right. You’ll be based mainly at Newton Park’s outstanding Commons building. Our campus buildings – which include a period manor house, gatehouse, keep, and state-of-the-art learning and performance facilities – are set in an eighteenth-century landscape complete with lake and pavilions.

With excellent links to nearby Bristol, you benefit from all the advantages of a buzzing, modern city, while being based in a beautiful, rural location just outside Bath city centre.  

You'll have access to excellent facilities including:

• Commons building
• Newton Park Library
• Subject resources and subject Librarian
• Virtual Learning Environment
• Writing and Learning Centre
• English Language Unit

In addition to the Library and online access to secondary and primary resources, we draw on the University’s own archive, other archives and museum collections, and the campus itself in our teaching.