Early Modern Studies

The Early Modern Studies MA offers an innovative blend of skills training (palaeography and historical bibliography), object-based learning and museum visits. The core modules cover a wide range of disciplines, giving you a broad understanding of the early modern period. You can then tailor your programme to suit your interests, with over forty optional modules, covering the culture, history and society of the early modern.

The MA will teach you critical reading skills, the ability to assess and weigh evidence, and construct persuasive arguments. It combines training in book history, bibliography, and paleography with a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of the early modern period.

Students undertake modules to the value of 180 credits.

The programme consists of two core modules (30 credits), between two and four optional modules (60 credits) and a dissertation (90 credits).

Core modules

• Early Modern Exchanges: Methods, Histories, Cultures A
• Early Modern Exchanges: Methods, Histories and Cultures B

Optional modules (indicative list):

Up to 60 credits from a list which varies each year. An up-to-date list is available on our website. Below is an indicative list, showing modules that have been offered previously.

• Shakespeare in his Time
• Sex and the Body in Early Modern Europe
• From Renaissance to Republic: The Netherlands: 1555-1609
• Early Modern Science
• The Self and the World: Theoretical Approaches to Travel Writing
• Aztec Archaeology: Codices and Ethnohistory
• Early Modern Books and Their Readers: Historical Bibliography for Researchers
• I.T. for Graduate Research
• Paradoxes of Enlightenment: German Thought from Leibniz to Humboldt
• Political Thought in Renaissance Europe
• The Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe
• Trade, Money and Institutions in the Ottoman Mediterranean 1600-1914
• Early Modern Handwriting and Manuscript Culture for Researchers
• Giordano Bruno
• The Public Sphere in Britain, 1476-1800: Print Culture, Censorship and Propaganda
• Men on the Moon: Cosmic Voyages in the Early Modern Period
• Thinking with Women: Gender as an Early Modern Category
• Web 0.1: Early Modern Information Culture, c.1450-c.1750
• The Conquest of Mexico

Dissertation/report

All students undertake an independent research project which culminates in a dissertation of 18,000 words.

Teaching and learning

The programme is delivered through a combination of tutorials, seminars, workshops, presentations, class discussions and library, archive, museum and gallery visits. Assessment is through essays, annotated bibliography and the dissertation.

A minimum of an upper second-class Bachelor's degree in a relevant subject from a UK university or an overseas qualification of an equivalent standard.

Want to improve your English level for admission?

Prepare for the program requirements with English Online by the British Council.

• ✔️ Flexible study schedule
• ✔️ Experienced teachers
• ✔️ Certificate upon completion

📘 Recommended for students with an IELTS level of 6.0 or below.

Enroll in the course