Despite huge advances in digital technologies, many of the approaches historian use remain rooted in the analogue age. Perhaps the only major change that computers have led to among historians to date is the use of major digitised archives, such as Early English Books Online, Old Bailey Online or the British Newspaper Archive. Even with these, many historians simply use these to search and browse, never making use of their full potential or able to critique the digitised sources effectively.

In the first part of this course you will look at how paper sources are digitised and encoded to create digital historical resources. This will enable you to understand how digital sources are created, and encourage you to think critically about their benefits and limitations. The second part of the course explores how digitised historical sources can be explored and analysed in more sophisticated ways. Corpus linguistics enables us identify and summarise themes of interest from millions or billions of words of text in ways that go far beyond simply keyword searches. It also helps the historian decide which parts of a large body of text require further research and which do not.

You do not need any prior knowledge of computing beyond the basics all history students will have. We will draw on examples from a wide range of topics from the early modern to modern British. You will also have the opportunity to use the techniques and approaches learnt with their own sources.

This 18,000-20,000 word dissertation provides the opportunity for you to demonstrate the knowledge, understanding, research skills and techniques of presentation developed in the taught modules of the MA degree scheme. The specialist field of enquiry is chosen by the student in consultation with a supervisor and other members of the department before arrival and in the first half of Michaelmas Term. Individual one-to-one supervisions will be provided throughout the year to support taught modules, define and formulate a research hypothesis, identify relevant qualitative and quantitative sources, offer guidance on presentation and comment on the structure of the dissertation.

This module will offer an introduction to the range of theories and methods most commonly used today in Digital Humanities. As primary and secondary sources of information become increasingly available, Humanities scholars have the capacity to study these in ways not traditionally envisioned before, being now able to answer questions such as: What patterns emerge in the discourses from 1,000 volumes of parliamentary data? What changes can we identify at a landscape scale during the formation of the Aztec Empire? Can the Romantic Novel be visualised? Covering the most cutting-edge research at the intersection of computing and the humanities, the module will offer an overarching view of the latest research in the fields of history, archaeology, literature, sociology, linguistics, politics, and religious studies.

Each session will introduce a topic through specific case studies covering a variety of theories from Data Justice, and Digital Inclusion, to Decolonial technology; as well as techniques and methods ranging from Geographic Information Retrieval, Text Mining, Network Analysis, Data Mining, Computational Linguistics, Visualisation and Data Design, to Human Computer Interaction.

The student will learn a wide variety of approaches and will acquire a broad overview of the field as is practiced today.

Alongside having a passion for the past, researching and writing a quality piece of history requires close engagement with the historian’s craft. What does good history look like? How can we be sure we are at the cutting edge of our discipline? What does it meant to write well?

In this core module, you will be guided through the process of conducting advanced historical research, reflecting upon the skills that you have and how they can be applied to extended pieces of research. Spanning both Michaelmas and Lent term, this module will take you from an introduction to postgraduate study through to laying the foundations for your dissertation, developing your understanding of the discipline of history, and your identity as an historian. The module culminates with a conference, where you will present your work to peers and members of academic staff, receiving feedback to develop your own and the opportunity to help your peers develop their projects.

This module will be assessed by a portfolio of work developed throughout the course, including a feasibility study.

Place names, latitude/longitude coordinates, qualitative relations (“next to”), spatial forms (lake, county, road): these are all different examples of spatial information that humanities researchers regularly encounter in sources from the past.

In this module, you will learn to use such information to think spatially with a critical mindset. Doing so will allow you to answer “where?” questions that can shed light on intellectual, cultural, political, social, economic, environmental, literary histories, the history of science and technology, as well as other historical humanities fields (archaeology, historical geography, classics, media studies).

The module provides a grounding in the foundational and current literature in the spatial humanities and opportunities to practice working with digital methods for spatial data creation, exploration, and analysis, including traditional Geographic Information System software (ArcGIS), pythonic geographic data science, network analysis, and browser-based tools for data annotation/visualisation/mapping.

Hands-on tutorials will focus on case studies from eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century French and British history and will highlight how Enlightenment and Victorian ideas and technologies are at the root of many basic spatial concepts and tools still in use today.

You will develop your own spatial analysis of a set of historical sources chosen from your previous research experience.

Here is what our students have said about the module

“The sessions... feel more inclusive and collaborative than I had imagined. It feels like a shared space, with the openness to express ideas or queries.”

"The large amount of theory in the class is really surprising - in a good way. Initially I thought this class would be mostly practical-based and workshop style, but the inclusion of readings has made it far more engaging.”

Corpus linguistics is a methodology whereby large collections of electronically transcribed texts are used in conjunction with computer tools to investigate language. This module aims to give you a general introduction into corpus based language study. It centres around two main parts – corpus methods for exploring linguistic variation and the applications of corpus linguistics such as language teaching, forensic linguistics and discourse analysis. In this module you will learn how to use corpus analysis packages such as CQpWeb, #LancsBox and Antconc.

This module offers you the opportunity to think about the objects and spaces through which history is presented to the public. You will have the chance to engage with scholarly perspectives about heritage practises and to gain insight into the workings of public institutions.

Its aim is to give you the opportunity to engage with scholarly criticisms of heritage practices and to gain insight into the workings of public institutions. Questions we will explore include: What are the processes through which history becomes heritage? By what means are objects gathered together and arranged in order to present, and preserve, ‘the past’? How are the meanings of these objects controlled and communicated to the public? In thinking through these, and other similar, questions, you will have the chance to consider the means through which ‘the historical temper’ is cultivated in both institutions and public spaces and, in particular, how and why the presentation of the past has changed over time. The module combines seminars with site visits, tours and sessions with heritage professionals.

This module introduces you to the practicalities and philosophies of doing interdisciplinary research in gender and women’s studies. You will learn to interpret, understand and explore the consequences of particular research methods. You will also be encouraged to critically consider the relationship between theories and methods in research. The module also provides scope for reflecting on the politics of knowledge, the ethics of research, and the relationship between disciplines and interdisciplinary fields such as gender and women’s studies. You will learn how some key conceptual frameworks within feminism (for example, sex and gender, body politics, sexual difference, queer theory) have been constructed over time through both research practices and theoretical arguments. This module will be useful as preparation for your own research later in the programme and particularly for your Master's dissertation.

How are gender, sex and bodies understood in contemporary sociology and feminist theory? How do feminist theorists and social scientists address questions of difference, representation and performativity in their research?

In this module, we engage with the work of particular theorists (enabling you to acquire skills in close reading and critical discussion), critically evaluate relevant empirical findings, and explore current issues of importance to sociology and feminism. Topics include medicalization and health, race and racism, sex and sexuality, bodily autonomy, and reproductive choice. The essays you write then give you scope to follow your own interests in more depth by using the reading lists provided and undertaking independent research.

This module explores the intricate relationship between war and the environment in East Asia, spanning from the ancient period to the modern era. Throughout history, conflicts in East Asia have led to widespread environmental degradation, ranging from deforestation and habitat destruction to pollution and climate change. From the strategic military campaigns of ancient empires to the devastating wars of the 20th century, each conflict has left its mark on the natural world, altering ecosystems and landscapes in profound ways.

From the ancient battles of dynastic China to the modern conflicts of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, this course will trace the evolution of war and its environmental impact across East Asia. More specifically, some of the major themes include climate, forests, landscape, animals, diseases and atomic bombs, while the wars include Mongol invasions, Ming-Qing transition, the East Asian War of 1592–1598, Japanese colonization, the Korean War, and the Cold War.

By exploring the historical context, environmental consequences, and contemporary implications of warfare in the region, you will develop critical insights into the intersection of military history, environmental studies, and East Asian geopolitics.

Ultimately, this module seeks to illuminate the often-overlooked environmental dimensions of East Asian warfare and foster a nuanced understanding of its enduring legacy. More importantly, the methodology you will learn in this module can be applied to other war studies you may be interested in.

This bespoke module is shaped by you and your allocated module supervisor. It enables you to develop a particular research interest if this cannot be accommodated within the dissertation or in other taught modules; alternatively, it can be used to undertake a guided reading programme under supervision. You should only consider this option if you have a clear idea of a particular project you wish to propose that is distinct from your dissertation project. You will be asked to consult the appropriate Director of Graduate Studies to discuss your choice, and the form of assessment will vary depending on the project, it will however be of equivalent weighting to 5,000 words of text.

This module will familiarise you with different theories in discourse studies and will provide practical skills and methods for analysing spoken, written and multimodal texts of different genres. It will involve hands-on practical work with texts which will help you acquire sufficient technical knowledge of linguistic description. More specifically, in this module we will approach discourse in two principal ways: on the one hand, we will regard discourse as structured use of language consisting of more than one sentence. The analysis of discourse in this sense will involve looking at the ways in which words, phrases and sentences hang together and make sense in context. On the other hand, we will consider discourse as language use as social practice that is influenced by, and influences, discourse practice and the wider social context. For example, we will speak of media discourse or political discourse and ask questions about their linguistic characteristics. We will also relate the texts that instantiate these discourses to the context of their production, distribution and reception, as well as to their wider social context.

This module aims to develop students’ understanding of the ways in which social phenomena are conceptualised, defined and measured. The module will be a mix of lectures, seminars, and computer-based labs where students will get to play with real data. You will access data, explore data sets, generate and modify variables, frequency counts, cross tabulation, produce tables, bar charts and scattergrams, and test relationships between variables.

How did people in the late Middle Ages conceive of the relationships between themselves and the natural world? How did early English literature react to and characterise the environment that seems an increasingly pressing concern for our own modern context? This module will explore the many roles that early literature played not just in reflecting the environment, but also in constructing and shaping human interactions with the natural world. The module examines a type of literary environment each week and investigates the kinds of relationships the texts posit between the human and non-human to address the above questions. We will work with theoretical approaches such as ecocriticism and encounter a wide range of primary source material that imagines early human interactions with the environment.

This module is designed to familiarise you with various ways of thinking about and analysing contemporary relations between science, technology and society. It draws upon a rich vein of theory and practice within science and technology studies (STS), an area of research that is particularly strong at Lancaster University.

You will be encouraged to ask sociologically-informed questions about the sciences and technologies that have become part of our everyday lives – including, for example, mobile phones, social media, cloud computing, genetic modification, human fertilisation techniques, air conditioning and technologies for electricity generation.

The module gives you the opportunity to understand how the different interpretive research methodologies used in STS – such as ethnography and participant observation, surveys, and analysis of social media – enable a researcher to ask important critical questions about science, technology, the environment and society.

Through case studies chosen by students on the module you will consider how we might engage as analysts – using which methods and practices? In what kinds of role? With what kind of limitations? And with what kinds of responsibility and accountability?

This module offers an introduction to understanding and exploring ideas of space, movement and identity in relation to major writers and texts across the nineteenth century with a particular interest in reading and mapping. What can and cannot be mapped? What resists or exceeds acts of mapping? We will read key writers of place alongside a range of relevant spatial and philosophical texts and extracts for each of the thematic themes that are addressed across the module. As the title suggests the course is particularly interested in the challenges involved in moving across and between direct physical and embodied experiences and the representation of place in different literary forms.

The module focuses on three themes: walking and writing; mapping literary place and space; and interior and exterior spaces. We will use these themes to think about how place and space are constructed through movement, action and reaction, as well as to consider how the visual representation of place through literary maps bears upon verbal description within a text.

This module offers you the chance to benefit from the Department’s established and expanding network of heritage partners by completing a professional placement. Our previous placement partners have included a number of notable organisations, such as the Duchy of Lancaster, Hoghton Tower, the Museum of Lancashire, the National Trust, the North Craven Trust, and the Senhouse Museum Trust.

The placement is centred on a specific project, which is agreed between the Department and the partner organisation, and completed under the supervision of that organisation. The work undertaken as part of the placement project can take a variety of different forms, ranging from cataloguing objects to assisting in arrangement for exhibitions to undertaking research work on a corpus of visual, audio or textual sources. You will need to take part in an application process with each heritage partner deciding on the best match of student for their placement.

The assessment for the module comprises a portfolio of work relating the placement and a reflective essay.

This module aims to take students with no prior knowledge of computer programming and give them the skills to write programs suitable for assisting with Digital Humanities research. The module is run in collaboration with the Institute of Coding (IoC - https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/scc/study/institute-of-coding/). The IoC was set up to introducing programming skills to a diverse range of people who would not traditionally be interested in computer science and provide them with new skills that may help their research or give them the skills to work in the digital economy.

The module is split into three parts: The first part is based on the IoC’s course "The Art of Coding". This provides an introduction to programming as a creative skill for solving problems. Key concepts are introduced in two languages: JavaScript which is widely used in web-programming, and Python which is extensively used for Digital Humanities tasks. The second part is based on the IoC’s "Scripting in Python" course which introduces the underlying principles of the Python language including: file input/output, lists, structural typing and awareness of simple Object Oriented programming. Students will also be briefly exposed to a world of open-source packages that can be accessed using the Python language. In the third part, the students will be given some time to develop their own Digital Humanities-based project in which they use the skills that they have learnt to solve a real-world research problem.

This module will lead you on a comprehensive exploration of a critical period in American history. It begins with an ending: the Cold War's close and the challenges and opportunities this seminal event posed for the United States.

As you traverse the timeline, you will have the chance to analyse the economic highs and lows (from the 1990s prosperity to the 2008 crisis) and navigate the political landscape punctuated by Clinton's impeachment, the controversial 2000 election, the emergence of Barack Obama, before ending with the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

We will focus closely on foreign policy in post-Cold War years, most notably 9/11, the Iraq War, and the broader War on Terror. The course will also trace the evolving socio-cultural battles on issues such as gay rights, racial conflict and the rise of Black Lives Matter, third-wave feminism, and gun control.

All the while, the module will consider broader forces shaping these events, such as the shifting media environment – including the rise of internet and social media – and the growth of globalisation. Students will be exposed to a wide variety of source material, running the gamut from standard historical texts to social media posts.

This module is designed to provide PGT level students interested in any aspect of historical research which appertains to the period c.1450 to c.1750 with the essential 'tool-kit' of skills, particularisms and themes which will underpin their study. Its syllabus will be varied across each student year-cohort, given the availability of teaching staff and their areas of expertise, but perhaps, more importantly, will be tailored to support and foster the research interests of individual students within any year. The notion of periodisation remains controversial within itself, and so part of the module will involve identifying what it is that distinguishes 1450-1750 from the eras earlier and later in time, to question the terminology of 'early-modern' and 'pre-modern' (and thus 'modern' and 'modernism'), and the Renaissance. We will also discuss the themes and issues which characterise early-modern history and through these, explore the types of evidence produced and how historians can access, use, interpret and analyse them.

Indicative topics may include:

Mobility and settlement;Adventurism, exploration and global links;Demographic change;The crisis of faith;The Scientific Revolution;The climatic crisis and its implications;Gender and power;Material Culture;Personal testimony, archives and manuscript;The dissemination of print.

This module examines, reflects on, and critiques the historical contexts of a range of colonial legacies and institutionalized inequalities in contemporary British society. These will be examined through a critical engagement with the ‘Atlantic’ in its myriad forms: as geographic space and living organism, as periodization, as diasporic identity, as the birth of modernity, as the site of millions of deaths of captive Africans, and as Anthropocene.

It then introduces the ‘Global South’ in geographic, economic, epistemological, and theoretical terms and engages you to consider what Global South paradigms and perspectives can expose when applied to critical examination of contemporary colonial legacies and how they can subvert the power of the (North) Atlantic.

The module invites you to ‘apply’ the theories, concepts, and perspectives you have engaged with in the course to contemporary social issues with a vision to create a fairer and equal society for the future.

What are the legacies of colonialism and empire that continue to pervade British society? In what ways does ‘the Atlantic’ perpetuate dominant readings of the past and simultaneously obscure others? How are Eurocentric and Global North epistemologies and framings of ‘the past’ shaping the narratives of our present? How can we incorporate Global South paradigms and perspectives to create change?

You will address these questions and others exploring how ‘the Atlantic’ has powerfully shaped contemporary colonial legacies, and also how it can be the site for disruption, subversion, and social change when considered from Global South perspectives.

Indicative topics will typically include:

• Colonial Legacies I: Beyond Race, Class, and Gender
• Colonial Legacies II: The Role of the Atlantic and the Birth of the Global South
• The Atlantic as Space and Place
• The Atlantic as Time and Method
• Diasporic Atlantics I: The Black Atlantic
• Diasporic Atlantics II: The Brown Atlantic
• Geographic Atlantics I: South/North Atlantic
• Geographic Atlantics II: Waste, Modernity, and the Anthropocene
• Reconfiguring a Global South Atlantic

This module will introduce students to writing for games of all kinds, both digital and pen-and-paper. We will explore the basic principles of collaborative narrative experience as we seek to engage both critically and creatively with this new and extremely popular branch of contemporary writing. The weekly workshops are currently supplemented by a weekly, evening Games Study Night in the University Library to explore existing games, play-test your own, and enjoy the Library’s rich collection of board games.