MSt in History (Medieval History)

The MSt is designed to improve your practical and intellectual grasp of research processes, 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 MSt. 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.

You will have the opportunity to study a vast range of medieval history from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries, and from Ireland and Iran. The course is not prescriptive about what topics you choose to study, but instead insists on intellectual rigour and excitement, whatever your choices.

Oxford is home to a large community of medieval historians, with exceptional resources for study, including the largest university library collection of medieval manuscripts, as well as college collections of manuscripts and archives, and the fine holdings of the Ashmolean Museum. There are weekly Medieval History seminars, as well as inter-disciplinary seminars, workshops, and research projects. Further information about Medieval History research and activities can be found through the Faculty website.

You are encouraged to engage with the faculty’s lively research culture of seminars, workshops, and discussions groups, which are programmed throughout each week, and sessions often involve leading international scholars. The faculty also runs the Oxford History Graduate Network, which fosters conversations and collaborations between graduate students. Interdisciplinary activities are available through The Oxford Centre for Research in the Humanities (TORCH).

Course structure

You will take two compulsory core courses and an optional subject course, as well as undertake an original research project. These courses are supported by a skills programme for general historical or field-specific training. 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. As well as training you to work with medieval sources in their original format, this course addresses the distinctive interpretive challenges they pose.  It also invites you to reflect on how historians’ approaches to medieval history have changed, influencing the questions, techniques and source bases used to study the Middle Ages, and how the study of the Middle Ages is situated with respect to scholars’ own times. Part-time students will take this course in year one. 

2. Theory and Methods

The format is a 1.5 hour weekly seminar in Michaelmas term. It will cover current methodological and theoretical approaches. Students and course tutors will choose six of these from a syllabus of nine. Part-time students will take this course in year two.

Optional subject course

Options are taught in a tutor-led, group setting in Hilary term. You will choose one option course from a list and this will be taught in six weekly two-hour classes during Hilary term. Part-time students will take an option course in year one. Options particularly relevant to medieval history include:

• The Twelfth-Century Renaissance 
• The Global Middle Ages
• Saints and Sanctity in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

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 the course, under the guidance of your supervisor. Students are expected to commit the Easter vacation and Trinity term to archival research and writing. You will be invited to present and receive feedback on your work-in-progress at a workshop specific to this course at the start of Trinity term. If studying part-time, you will be expected to complete the dissertation at the end of Trinity term in year two.

Recent topics in MSt and MPhil research have included:

• Pagans and Christians in late Roman North Africa
• Gendering the common voice in later medieval England
• Material culture and the creation of meaning in late medieval wills
• The translation of saints’ relics as political ritual
• The Apocalypse in eighth and ninth century Iberia.

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. 

The faculty runs an intensive three-week pre-term Latin course specifically designed for incoming students on Medieval and Early Modern courses with limited (or no) background in Latin. During term-time, you are expected to take weekly Latin classes (at beginners, intermediate or advanced level, depending on previous experience). 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. In consultation with your supervisor and depending on your choice of topic, instruction in Old English and other medieval languages is available, and also in modern languages such as French, German or Italian. Further details on language learning can be found on the faculty website.

You will be introduced to the study of medieval handwriting, books and documents (Palaeography and Diplomatic). You will have plenty of opportunity to practise these skills and will have the opportunity to work on original manuscript books and documents from Oxford’s many collections, and elsewhere.

These skills will be taught with an emphasis on historical skills and knowledge; applicants interested in a developing their knowledge of medieval languages or acquiring a greater level of expertise in medieval palaeography and manuscript studies are advised also to consider applying for the separate MSt in Medieval Studies or the MSt or MPhil in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies.

Attendance

Full-time students will complete the course in nine months. 

Part-time students will complete the course in eighteen months and are not subject to residence requirements, but are required to attend the faculty in person for classes, skills training, research activities, and supervision. You should expect to be in Oxford for up to two days a week in term time. Distance learning is not available.

Resources to support your study

Oxford is home to one of the largest communities of medieval historians in the world, with exceptional resources for study, including the largest university library collection of medieval manuscripts, as well as college collections of manuscripts and archives, and the fine holdings of the Ashmolean Museum.

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 MSt 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 core courses are assessed by a Methodology Essay and you must also submit an annotated bibliography and dissertation proposal, all to be submitted in January. 

The optional subject course is assessed according to the regulations for that course, usually an assessed essay or exam, at the end of Hilary term.

The research project is examined by a 15,000-word dissertation that is submitted at the end of Trinity term.

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