Supervision

The MA is taught by a team whose submission to the Research Assessment Exercise in 2008 was considered to be 90 per cent internationally recognized, internationally excellent or world-leading. The MA builds on the substantial strengths associated with the Centre for Oral History Research in the Journalism and Media Subject Area of the School of Music, Humanities and Media. We have run successful projects on rugby league in West Yorkshire, the Asian community in Kirklees, the two minutes silence, British views of Hollywood, and the yeomen warders and the Tower of London.

Programme of Research

You will take a core taught module introducing you to advanced historical study, including oral history, and you will be trained how to interview people and then edit and analyse their testimony. You will then undertake a research project. You will conduct a number of oral history interviews around a theme that you have devised. You will summarise, edit and transcribe the interviews as necessary in order to communicate your research findings, and produce an analytical commentary on the methodologies and conclusions of your research. You have the option to produce a relevant media outcome to communicate the findings of your research to a non-academic audience, such as a website, pamphlet, exhibition, or podcast and to produce a 6,000 word commentary and analysis. Alternatively you will be to produce a 12,000 word dissertation based on your interviews. This makes the course suitable for both practising oral historians and those wishing to pursue further academic research.

Publication route

If you have already conducted an oral history project (such as an exhibition, audiowalk, website etc) you may be able to submit this, with a dissertation exploring the contribution to knowledge that you have already made.