Skip to main content

MA History

 

The MA in History can be studied following one of five strands:

  • Ancient History
    The ancient history strand offers a detailed study of the historian's tools, examing the methodology employed in the interpretation of ancient souce material of various kinds, including ancient writers, epigraphy, numismatics, and laws and legal texts. In addition, students have a choice in the detailed study of various periods of history, namely the social, economic and legal history of classical Athens, the Jewish background to the rise of Christianity, and the relationship of Christianity to the Roman Empire, and the history of Rome under the early Julio-Claudian emperors.

  • Religion, Identity and Conflict in History
    This strand explores the role played by religion in various forms and modes of historical conflict and identity, from the rise of Reformation to the global age, in Europe and the World. It looks at how religious convictions have intersected and interacted with the historical dynamic, how it fostered social, cultural, and political discord as well as acted as a mediator and a mitigator for peace.

  • British History 
    This strand focuses on British history in the twentieth century. It provides an introduction to the latest historiography being employed in political history, cultural and social and intelligence history.  Students will have the opportunity to explore topics in domestic British history, as well as the history of British intelligence.  Those interested in intelligence history can contact Professor Keith Jeffery, who has recently completed the official history of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), for further information.
  • American History
    This strand focuses on the history of the United States, and especially the American South, in the last two centuries.
  • Medieval and Early Modern History      
    A strand in Medieval and Early Modern History is coordinated by Dr James Davis and Dr Sinead O’Sullivan. It comprises early medieval European history, medieval social and economic history, Byzantine history, early modern cultural history, European Reformation history, medieval and early modern Irish history.

[Apply online]                  [Funding]

Applicants are requested to specify which of these strands they intend to follow in the 'Additional Information' section of the Postgraduate Application form for MA Modern History.

Why MA Modern History at Queen's University Belfast?

The MA in Modern History draws on the research strengths of QUB’s team of British, British Imperial, European and American historians, and makes use of the primary source collections for British and American history held in the QUB Main Library and Special Collections, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and other libraries and archives in the region.

Modern History at QUB has particular strengths in the following areas of British and American history:

late medieval economic history of England; 16th-17th century England; British political history 18th-20th centuries; the British army and the world wars; espionage and intelligence; British working-class cultural and social history in the 20th century; the British empire in Asia and Africa;

19th-20th Century American history – especially ‘the South’, race relations, labour and gender history; Irish migration to the Americas.

For further details please contact the MA Modern History strand co-ordinators as follows:

Religion, Identity and Conflict strand: Dr Todd Weir
British History strand: Dr Sean O'Connell and Professor Keith Jeffery
American History strand: Professor Catherine Clinton

Teaching Staff on MA Modern History

Prof Catherine Clinton (Modern US, gender)

Dr Paul Corthorn (20th-century Britain; international relations)

Dr James Davis (Economic history of later medieval England)

Prof Peter Gray (19th-century British political history; Irish emigration)

Prof. Crawford Gribben (Religion, Millenarism, literature)

Prof David Hayton (17th-18th century British political history)

Prof Keith Jeffery (Political and military history of 19th-20th century Britain and British Empire; espionage and intelligence)

Dr Brian Kelly (Modern US, labor and race)

Dr Danny Kowalsky (Modern Spain; Soviet foreign policy)

Professor Chris Marsh (Religion and popular culture in early-modern England)

Dr Eric Morier-Genoud (World history, Africa, Religion, Politics)

Dr Sean O'Connell (Working class family and community, oral history, gender, the social history of modern Britain)

Dr Olwen Purdue (Social and economic history of nineteenth and early twentieth–century Ireland)

Dr Emma Reisz (British empire; South-east Asia; postcolonialism)

Dr Anthony Stanonis (20th-century US; popular culture; New Orleans)

Dr Scott Dixon (early modern European history)

Dr Sinead O'Sullivan (Carolingian history)

Dr Dion Smythe (Byzantine history)

Dr Alex Titov (Russian and East European history)

Dr Todd Weir (Europe, Religion, Secularization)