Military History MA

The University of Buckingham is:<br/>- Home of the two-year degree, the University of Buckingham, based in the South East of England, is ranked 6th for Student Satisfaction in the UK (National Student Survey, 2020).<br/><br/><br/>- We are proudly independent and not-for-profit, and offer courses in Allied Health, Business, Computing, Education, Humanities, Law, Medicine, Psychology and Security and Intelligence. We are one of the few universities in the UK that offer September and January start dates for almost all of our courses.<br/><br/><br/>- Based in Buckingham on a riverside campus, we are only 20 minutes’ from Milton Keynes central station and a short drive from Bicester, Aylesbury, Banbury and Northampton. There is free parking on-site and we are within easy reach of London and Oxford.<br/><br/><br/>- Our award-winning small class tutorials ensure every student is known by name and supported throughout their studies, including by dedicated personal tutors.<br/><br/><br/>- As pioneers of the two-year degree, we offer a condensed version of the traditional three-year degree, meaning you can gain a full honours degree and complete your studies a whole year earlier. Alternatively, you can complete both your undergraduate and master’s degree with us in just three years: saving you time and money.<br/><br/><br/>MA Military History by research: from Marlborough to Montgomery<br/>The University of Buckingham’s Master’s programme in Military History offers the opportunity to pursue research in any one of a wide range of topics ranging in time from the campaigns of the Duke of Marlborough in the early eighteenth-century through to the end of the Second World War.<br/><br/>The majority of students have tended to opt for subjects ranging from the Boer War to 1945, but theses addressing the Napoleonic campaigns, naval warfare in the nineteenth century, and the role of the military in the expansion of the British and other European empires have also figured prominently. Themes have ranged from the social impact of war to the biographies of leading combatants, the operational and tactical development of armies to the international, strategic and political dimensions of military history.<br/><br/>The Financial Times has reviewed the course enthusiastically, noting that ‘Intellectually curious professionals are signing up for a new course that gives them the opportunity to exchange thoughts on security, diplomacy and the armed forces over dinner with stellar historians and military top brass’.<br/><br/>Individual research topics are of course closely focused; but the approach of the course is to encourage students to consider military history as something more than the analysis of particular campaigns and to consider factors like politics, culture and society. The choice of subject area is ultimately the student’s own.<br/><br/>The Master’s degree can be taken either full-time and completed in a single academic year, or taken part-time and extended over two years. Although original research it the prime focus of the programme, there is also a strongly collegial aspect to the course, as all research students meet regularly throughout the year for a series of early-evening seminars by some of the most distinguished scholars working in the field of Military History. The seminars are held in the Caledonian Club, Belgravia, London, and provide an opportunity for students to meet and debate with the visiting speaker. Each seminar is followed by a working dinner at which discussion continues. (The full seminar programme is given below.)<br/><br/>The MA is awarded solely on the basis of the dissertation (there are no ‘exams’), and the relationship between the student and supervisor is therefore at the heart of the course.<br/><br/>The maximum length for the MA dissertation in the School of Humanities is 25,000 words (or approximately 75 pages at line-spacing of 1.5), excluding notes and references. Student and supervisor meet regularly on a one-to-one basis to discuss, plan, and review the dissertation as it develops through the year.