MPhil in History (Early Modern History 1500-1700)

The MPhil includes a sustained period devoted to archival research and writing, and is designed to give you a thorough training in historical research, improve your ability to conceptualise and engage with historical problems, and enlarge your understanding of the historical and historiographical context in which your own research is set. The course can serve as either a free-standing graduate qualification, or as a springboard to doctoral study. Students wishing to proceed to doctoral study will be encouraged to develop their doctoral proposals during the first few months of the second year. Skills training and option-choice are flexible and open-ended, to allow you to gain the knowledge and training needed to complete your research project. 

From the Reformation and Counter-Reformation to the Enlightenment, you will look at how the world was transformed by the new encounters between civilisations. You will explore the visual and material culture of the Renaissance and Baroque, and ask how the idea of the self developed, you will track changes in warfare and the growth of the state, and examine how gender relations were transformed and social hierarchies challenged.

Oxford has one of the largest groups of Early Modernists in the world, with multidisciplinary research activities being brought together by the Centre for Early Modern Studies. Further information about Early Modern research and activities can be found through the faculty website.

All graduate students are encouraged to engage with the faculty’s lively research culture of seminars, workshops, and discussions groups. There’s something happening nearly every day of the week and sessions often involve leading international scholars. The faculty also runs the Oxford History Graduate Network, which fosters conversation and collaboration between graduate students. Interdisciplinary activities are available through The Oxford Centre for Research in the Humanities (TORCH).

Course structure

You will take three compulsory core papers and two optional papers, as well as undertake an original research project. There is also a research masterclass, which is not assessed. This structure gives access to a wide range of both general and specialised training within the field of history.

Core courses

1. Sources and Historiography

This is a weekly 1.5 hour seminar in Michaelmas term of the first year. You will critically examine how the field has been transformed by the challenges of global history, what concepts like 'early modernity' or the ‘fiscal-military state’ might mean, and ego-documents and experience. We will consider how the work of thinkers like Lynn Hunt, Michel Foucault, or Norbert Elias have changed our field, and what challenges are posed by the history of gender.

2. Theory and Methods

The format is a 1.5 hour weekly seminar in Michaelmas term of the first year. It will cover current methodological and theoretical approaches. Students and course tutors will choose six of these from a syllabus of nine. 

3. Writing History

This is a weekly class in Trinity term of the first year exclusively for MPhil students, with all MPhil students taught in one or two classes. The classes range widely across history and involve critical reading and thinking about published work.

4. Research Master Class

Taught in weekly classes in Michaelmas term of the second year, during which students present and receive feedback on their work. 

Optional subject course

A free choice of the options on offer taught in six weekly classes during Hilary term of the first and second year.  Options of particular interest to early modern history include:

• Selfhood in History: 1500 to the present
• The Dawn of the Global World, 1450-1800: Ideas, Objects, Connections
• State and Society in Early Modern Europe
• The Enlightenment, c.1680-1800: Ideas and the Public Sphere
• Microhistory and its uses in early modern history
• Early Modern Venice and Istanbul: Connected and Comparative Cultural Histories
• The Iberian Global Empires (1450-1700) and their Archive(s).

More information on options is available through the faculty website. Not every optional subject listed may be on offer every year.

Research Project

You will work on original research project throughout both years, under the guidance of your supervisor. You are expected to commit the summer vacation between the two years and the Michaelmas term of the second year to archival research.

Recent topics of MSt and MPhil research have included:

• The effects of the English Reformation on socio-economic relations in early modern England
• Academic life of Moscow University in the eighteenth century
• Levels of female involvement within the sixteenth-century commercial environment in England
• The growth of the professional diplomat in the long sixteenth century: an Eastern Mediterranean perspective
• Sex and Subcultures in Arts Clubs and Societies in London in the 18th Century
• Pauper petitions and survival strategies in 17th-century England
• 'Ragged, and Torne, and True': Conceptions and Depictions of Poverty in England and the Netherlands, 1500-1650
• The Suffering Christ: piety and identity in print and prayer, 1450-1550
• Performance of the Condemned: Newgate 1676-1772

• Doubt and Conscience in the life and writings of Thomas More.

More details of core and optional papers are available on the course webpage of the faculty's website (see the Further information and enquiries section for further details). 

Skills Provision

Additional lectures, classes, and tutorials take place in Michaelmas and Hilary terms to provide general and specific training. You will discuss what training you need to undertake your research project with your supervisor. Training available includes document and object handling, palaeography, oral history, text analysis software, GIS software, and statistical analysis. 

Language training is also available, with the Faculty organising special courses for historians in French, German, Spanish, and Italian. Other modern language courses are available through the University’s Language Centre. Courses in Latin and other medieval languages are also available. Further details on language learning can be found on the faculty website.

The faculty runs an intensive three-week pre-term Latin course specifically designed for incoming students on Early Modern and Medieval courses with limited (or no) background in Latin. Weekly Latin classes are available during term-time to improve your Latin skills. As knowledge of Latin is essential to work on primary sources, these courses are provided without additional cost. Incoming students will be contacted over the summer with details of the pre-term course. Further details on language learning can be found on the faculty website.

You will have access to some of the most advanced digital human resources in the UK, and will be able to acquire the palaeographical skills needed to read manuscripts and archival material.

Attendance

Resources to support your study

You will be able to draw on the specialist resources offered by the Bodleian History Faculty Library which provides dedicated support and training courses for all graduates. You can also access the many college libraries and college archives which house significant collections of personal papers as well as institutional records dating back to the middle ages.

Supervision

The allocation of graduate supervision for this course is the responsibility of the Faculty of History and it is not always possible to accommodate the preferences of incoming graduate students to work with a particular member of staff. Offers will only be made if appropriate supervision is available.

It is usual practice that MPhil students have one supervisor, but a co-supervisor will be appointed if additional specialist knowledge is required. One supervisor must be a member of the Faculty of History, but a co-supervisor can be appointed from a different department.

Your supervisor(s) is there to provide advice, guidance, and support throughout. You should arrange to meet your supervisor(s) early in your first term to establish a clear framework for your research and writing, and identify any skills training needed to undertake your research. There is no set timetable for the frequency of future meetings, but it is recommended that you arrange to meet your supervisor several times each term, to discuss progress of your research and writing. You should also agree a timetable for the submission and return of drafts of your dissertation.

If you contact a potential supervisor prior to submitting your application, any indication made by an academic that they may be willing to supervise a potential project, is not a guarantee that you will be offered a place, or that the supervisor in question has capacity to supervise you in that particular year.

Assessment

The Sources and Historiography and the Theory and Methods core courses are examined by an assessed essay submitted at the end of Michaelmas term of year one. You must also submit an annotated bibliography and dissertation proposal at this time.

The optional subjects will be examined according to the regulations governing the course, which could be by assessed essay or by examination, at the end of Hilary term in years one and two.

The Writing History core course is examined by an assessed essay submitted at the end of Trinity term of year one. 

The research project is examined by a 30,000-word dissertation that is submitted in week six of Trinity term of year two.

Graduate destinations

About a quarter of master’s students proceed to doctoral work at Oxford; others continue academic study at other institutions. Other career destinations are as diverse as, but broadly in line with, undergraduate history career destinations: law, finance, management consultancy, civil service etc.

College preference

The following colleges accept students for the MPhil in History (Early Modern History 1500-1700):