Good universities for Medieval History/Studies Masters?

Hi,
I was interested in knowing what people on here considered to be good universities at which to do an MA/MRes in Medieval History or Medieval Studies. I've been considering Birmingham, Durham and (as a best case scenario) Cambridge, but would like to keep my options open and hear from the horses' mouths which places are actually good. Online lists are one thing, hearing from people who have actually been/know someone who did is another.

Thanks!

Hi, nice to see a medievalist online, there's not many of us!

I did my master's at Oxford (Med. History, though I know lots of people who did medieval studies too) and I can recommend you put that on your list too, to start with. Even if you're considering Cambridge as a long shot, everyone I knew in Oxford got into Cambridge too, and they're both very good on things like high number of medievalists, therefore high numbers of seminars, great library resources etc. plus being in a beautiful medieval city is really inspiring!

Other unis, well I obviously don't have first hand experience, but the one's you've mentioned all have a good reputation for Medieval history/studies. A few other's with similar reputations are London unis (King's and Birkbeck in particular have a strong staff list, plus you also get the IHR seminars here), York (esp. for medieval studies) and St Andrews (if you can put up with living on the edge of nowhere).

When it comes to graduate level though, the most important thing to consider is your specific interests and supervisor - try to identify a course that has option modules that appeal and relate to your interests and which has a supervisor on faculty who will take an interest. If (like 90% of my master's cohort) you want to try for an academic career, your MA/MPhil/M.whatever supervisor is a key reference and will be important in helping you get to know the important people in your sub-field.

What is your specific area/interests, if you don't mind me asking?

I have applied for Medieval Hist/Studies masters courses to commence in 2014 too.

Staff at my current university praise York's Medieval Studies program a great deal. I have heard cautionary tales (that someone else could perhaps confirm or allay) that the Medieval History program there is based at the campus outside the town, so you lose out on much of the college atmosphere of the Medieval Studies Center if you don't go for the Medieval Studies course itself.

If you are interested in Palaeography, language, and utilising visual/material sources such as the Mappa Mundi, you should be a good fit on a Medieval Studies program.

@ ellie.rew I'd be interested to hear what you made of the Oxford Hist. masters, good and bad points perhaps? I was mostly impressed on the open day, and there are some absolute top academics in my field there.

Hi,
I was interested in knowing what people on here considered to be good universities at which to do an MA/MRes in Medieval History or Medieval Studies. I've been considering Birmingham, Durham and (as a best case scenario) Cambridge, but would like to keep my options open and hear from the horses' mouths which places are actually good. Online lists are one thing, hearing from people who have actually been/know someone who did is another.

Thanks!

I've applied for an MA in Medieval Studies at York commencing in 2014. I visited a couple of years ago to get a feel for the area and the program and it felt like a great fit for me. My interests vary across the disciplines and I'm very happy about the options they offer that include architecture and the skills modules that I'm currently not able to take advantage of here in the US.
York is small and quiet. I stayed on the Minster side of the city, away from the University but in the neighborhood of the King's Manor where the Centre is. Not much of a night life over that way. The streets were deserted by 10 pm (early July). I can't speak for the other side of town. I'm a mature, mature student and not interested in clubs and late nights these days. Hope this helps! Good Luck!!

Wow, that's a very wide range! With such a range it's hard to pin down one uni with a particular strength, though KCL has David Carpenter for 13th century Britain and Cambridge has Rosamond McKitterick for Charlemagne and i think one of the London unis (maybe UCL?) has a higher than average (i.e. more than one) concentration of paleographers, though I know much less about that side of things.


In terms of medieval historiography, if you mean what I think you mean, you'll have plenty of that to do anyway, as I imagine you'll have to do a critical reading of basically every source you put into your dissertation (I had to write a report for my supervisor for each one e.g. style of writing, construction of text, political motivations/partisanship etc. etc.), so I don't think that will be much help in the decision making process!


Just a word of warning - if you're not very sure what you'd like to focus on, for the year at least, be warned that Oxbridge (and especially Cambridge) do want to know what the general thrust of your research will be when you're applying (although they are very flexible when you arrive, I doubt 13th cent. Britain to pre-Christian European religion would be a possible switch). Other programmes seem to offer more flexibility.


I'm actually working in a library at the moment, paying off the debts (these masters aren't cheap kids!) and applying for PhD next year in London and Oxford.



I have heard nothing but good things about Medieval Studies at York!

Bear in mind that with boundaries between disciplines so blurred now, the choice of History vs Studies is often more about the structure of the actual degree (e.g. in Oxford Studies is 9 months vs History is 11 months, with the summer to finish your dissertation). I know a lot of Medieval history people who did very interdisciplinary/culturaly stuff, along with a few medieval studies people who took nearly all the same classes as I did and would have had no problem being in the history course. Of course if you want to study Medieval High German literature or Urban communes in 13th century Italy, then your choice is clear but there's lots of room for overlap. (N.B. if you can't tell which topic goes with which course, then it's time to worry!)

I really loved oxford, and I really hope I get funding to go back next year. The libraries are fantastic (even have really obscure foreign language books and journals) and of course have a huge amount of medieval manuscripts, which you can just order up to look at whenever you like! Also having a practical paleography class with an original magna carta is amazing! You will also have a college and a college library, which are usually quite well stocked and tend to just buy you any book they don't already have (which again is amazing). You get really high level access with top scholars in every field, not just your supervisor, but also with the seminars (which always have drinks and a chat either before or after), where visiting speakers come nearly every week, from most of the universities mentioned above and from lots more too.

The downside is I think the stress and workload, but I think that's every master's, not just Oxford. It's a big step up from undergrad, not just in quality but in quantity too. It's very easy to feel overwhelmed, stressed and lonely, but again I think this is probably a universal and Oxford has so much going on (seminars, concerts, socials, balls, dinners etc etc) that it's never hard to find something to do if work's getting too much. Keeping up with it is exhausting though, I have much more free time with my full-time job now than I did last year!

If there's any more questions though, just ask!

Thanks a lot for all that, good food for thought.

And I've got no problem in principle to narrowing down, which I know I'll have to do at some point. I'm just lucky (or cursed) to find quite a lot of things interesting (though some would just call it scatter-brained).

Just out of interest, do you mind my asking what you specialized in for your masters' dissertation/research?

I ended up writing my dissertation on Carolingian and post-Carolingian saints' cults, focusing on the Loire valley, but I'm interested in saints more widely, as well as monastic economics, relations between church and state and religious iconography in royal propaganda.

That sounds so interesting. Why the Loire valley, in particular? Was it a particular hagiographic hotbed, or just a thing to pick to stop it being too broad?

I mainly chose it because my main source was the Miracula Sancti Benedicti (written at Fleury)so I tried to expand it out a little and a bit of regional context.

Another reason I picked this though was that the Miracula have a modern translation (even if it's in French), which makes it much easier to work with while you're still learning Latin than sources without a translation. The intensive Latin course is very good in Oxford (better than Cambridge we were told), but it does involve learning the bulk of a language in 3 weeks, so it's best not to rely too much on it unless you've got previous Latin experience.

Ah, fair enough. And I am totally cool and did me some Latin learning for the last couple of summers. Nowhere near enough, but I've got the fundamentals.

Hi Blou17! I was accepted into the Medieval Studies program at York. It's very exciting! I'm a "mature" student as well. This will be a huge change in my lifestyle, to say the least!

Ah congrats! I got another offer today from Durham MA Medieval and Early Modern so I'm very pleased. Yes, will be a big lifestyle change for me too, I've been teaching for 15 years. Now the boot will be on the other foot!