Keele University
Keele, Staffordshire ST5 513G

See below for

The University

Special features of History at Keele

Applications

Degree courses and options

Contacts

The University

Size. Keele is a relatively small, campus university, with some 4,500 undergraduates.

Location. The university occupies beautiful and spacious grounds in North Staffordshire, near to the city of Stoke-on-Trent and the M6 motorway. Most of our students live on the campus in relatively inexpensive rooms and flats. Accommodation is guaranteed in the first year, but is usually available for the second and third years too.

The Campus - aerial view

View of the central part of the campus

History at Keele

History is one of the larger departments at Keele. There are twenty members of staff, teaching and researching from the medieval to the contemporary periods. We admit 180 students each year; roughly three-fifths of whom are female, two-fifths male. It is important to emphasise that, like all degrees at Keele, History can only be taken in joint-honours combination with a second subject. English, Politics, American Studies, Law and Business Administration are among the more popular combinations, but many others are available (see university prospectus or UCAS guide). As a consequence we do not insist on A-level, or AS-level History as an entrance requirement. Offers will vary depending on the precise combination in your application.

Applications

Entry requirements guidelines (2000): A Level grades BCC-BBB

UCAS application course codes. Load the free UCAS CD-Rom.
Tel. 01242 223707. E-mail. app.req@ucas.ac.uk

UCAS address: Rosehill, New Barn Lane, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL52 3LZ

Department website: http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/hi/hihome.htm.

 Keele

History at Keele

All of our special subjects involve the writing of a dissertation, a project of 1 0,000 words, which is based on original research, under the supervision of your special-subject tutor.
In your second year, regardless of the combination you are taking, there is an opportunity to spend the first semester, up until Christmas, studying at one of our partner institutions in North America or continental Europe. Last year almost thirty of our students took this opportunity to study abroad.
Finally, we place considerable emphasis on the acquisition of skills that you can employ in the future. We help you to improve your ability to speak in public and to work with other members of your seminar group, as well as to enhance your essay writing and research techniques. While we believe that the study of History has its own particular rewards, we encourage you to think about a career in the many professions for which the broad variety of historical skills prepare you.

The details: History degree courses and options

We offer three courses in the department: History, which explores aspects of history over the past one thousand years; International History, which has a global focus and concentrates on the past two centuries; and Russian History and Culture, which involves the study of some literature and politics as well as the history of Russia.
All three courses operate within the joint-honours framework, but cannot be combined with each other. They have a similar structure: a broad first year which introduces you to the different periods and themes for study; a choice of four options which explore the history of particular countries or issues, in your second year; and an in-depth study based on a special subject in your third and final year.
We divide our year into two semesters and you take four modules in History each year. Teaching is by lecture and seminar and we assess you by means of coursework and examination. Examples of modules currently on offer in the department include:

  • First Year: Medieval Europe; Early Modem Europe; Modern Europe; Power and the Modern World; The West and the Third World; An Introduction to Russian History and Culture.

  • Second Year: The Kingdom of France in the Middle Ages; The Kingdom of England, 1066-1307; English Radicals and Writers in the Late Middle Ages; Religion, Politics and Society in England, 1603-1689; The Enlightenment; Crime and Punishment in England, 1800-1939; Russia from Emancipation to CIS; Imperialism; The Third Republic in France, 1870-1940; Twentieth-Century Ireland; The Re-Shaping of Post-War Europe, 1941-1955.

  • Third Year: The Kingship of Edward II; The Origins of the Hundred Years War; The English Reformation; The English Civil Wars, c l640-1649; English Society and Culture, 1700-1800; The Search for Stability in Revolutionary France, 1789-1804; Criminal Russia: Crime, Corruption, Policing and the Underworld in the Russias Old and New; The Uncertain Giant: America and Europe, 1924-1941; The Shoah: The Murder of the European Jews; Religion, Politics and Society in the Making of Modern Zimbabwe.

Contacts

Our departmental website address is http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/hi/hihome.htm.
Dr Alannah Tomkins is our admissions officer, 
e-mail: hia03@keele.ac.uk                   
Tel: 01782 583196