History and Politics

Modules are designed to encourage you to think across the disciplinary boundaries. One day you might be writing a funding proposal for a local grassroots organisation; the next, analysing primary archival sources. You'll explore the historical and philosophical foundations of political ideas while examining their social, environmental and cultural impact. 

Our perspectives are local and global, and our approach is applied. You’ll gain broad skills and professional expertise – how to interpret, evaluate diverse sources, debate complex issues and communicate ideas effectively. You'll have the opportunity to network and work with professionals within and beyond the University, forging valuable connections as you prepare for your future career. 

Year one
Build strong foundations in historical and political thinking through a broad curriculum that encourages curiosity, critical questioning, and the confident evaluation of evidence, data, and ideas.

Year two
Applied, practical, and career-focused: combine in-depth study of your chosen topics with professional skill development, applying your knowledge to real-world problems, projects, and debates.

Year three
Specialise, create, and achieve: your final project brings together everything you’ve learned as you pursue your own area of interest. Whether producing an extended dissertation, designing an exhibition, developing digital resources, leading a community project, or pitching ideas to external organisations, you’ll apply your skills in ambitious and meaningful ways.

At BSU, our courses are designed to equip our graduates with the knowledge and skills they’ll need for the real world. To do this, we are continually improving our courses by responding to feedback from students and other stakeholders. This may mean changes may be made to the curriculum. You’ll always be given notice of any such changes.

For more information on how we approach such changes at the university, please read our policies on

• Suspensions and Discontinuations
• Programme modifications.

You'll be assessed through a balanced mix of traditional academic work and applied, contemporary methods designed to reflect real-world practice. These may include essays, research papers, policy briefs, group presentations, project work, portfolios, campaign materials and professional reports. 

Our assessment approach is designed to help you develop and demonstrate a wide range of academic and professional skills. These include planning and organising work effectively, meeting deadlines, prioritising tasks, and communicating complex ideas clearly. You will also gain experience in presenting information in different formats, including visual and digital communication as well as written work.

A key feature of the course is the opportunity to shape your own learning. You will design your own research projects and questions, developing your own specialist interests with guidance from tutors, input from industry partners, and support from your peers. 

Learning is active and varied, combining lectures, seminars, workshops, practical sessions, one-to-one tutorials and field trips. Alongside your core teaching, you can access university-wide academic support to strengthen your study skills and develop confidence with new tools, methods, and technologies. 

To find out more about how we teach and how you'll learn, please read our information on Your Learning and Teaching at BSU.

As part of your degree, you could study abroad on a placement at one of Bath Spa’s partner universities.

Depending on your module choices, you’ll visit Stonehenge, Avebury, Bristol Harbour, M-Shed, major national museums and galleries such as Oxford’s Ashmolean or the V&A, and hidden gems such as the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes or Dyrham Park, just outside Bath.

Linked to our teaching, trips change from year to year. We'll visit a variety of political organisations, ranging from parish councils to pressure groups.

Our location in the heart of the Bath and Bristol cultural area means you can learn outside the seminar room. We have The Holburne Museum, Roman Baths and Brunel’s SS Great Britain right on our doorstep.

Placement modules prepare you for the world of work. We have an extensive network of partners across local, regional and national organisations, and can help you make the most of the opportunity to work with them. Placements may include working for environmental groups, charities, or pressure groups – it's up to you to arrange the placement that best suits your goals, but we can help and advise you. 

You'll be able to work on projects with our partners in the city and region. This might involve research in a historic house, oral history projects, or devising public events and exhibitions. Through these projects, you’ll work collaboratively, manage your time, develop project management skills, and prepare for a future career.

We want you to graduate as an inventive, thoughtful individual, fully aware of the changing narratives of the ‘new’ world that surrounds us.

If you’ve ever wondered what you can do with a History and Politics degree, the answer may surprise you. Yes, you could become a historian or a teacher, but we prepare you for so much more.

This course is designed to prepare you for any career that requires a questioning, rigorous approach, and the ability to devise imaginative solutions to contemporary problems.

The transferable skills you’ll gain on this course will prepare you for a career that demands confident communication at all levels. This could include curation for museums and heritage organisations, or work in the public and social services, the charitable sector, or the NHS. You’ll be well-equipped for international development, project management, education, and events management. You may also choose to continue your studies at postgraduate level.

Our graduates have gone into such areas as financial services, the police force, and management training schemes with major retailers, as well as working for the National Trust, Bristol Old Vic and the Southbank Centre.

If you’re a full-time undergraduate student starting your first year at Bath Spa University, you can apply for the Certificate in Global Citizenship, which you’ll study alongside your degree.

You’ll gain global awareness and add an international dimension to your student experience, and funding is available. On successful completion of the programme, you’ll be awarded a Certificate in Global Citizenship. This is in addition to your degree; it doesn’t change your degree title or results.

The Professional Placement Year (PPY) provides you with the opportunity to identify, apply for, and secure professional experience, normally comprising one to three placements over a minimum of nine months. Successful completion of this module will demonstrate your ability to secure and sustain graduate-level employment.

By completing the module, you'll be entitled to the addition of 'with Professional Placement Year' to your degree title.

Before your PPY, you'll work to identify roles of interest and secure a placement. The Placements Team will support through timetabled sessions and 1:1 appointments.

As well as completing a minimum of 900 placement hours, you will complete two assessments demonstrating your skill development, growth in professional behaviours and how the PPY has impacted your future career aspirations.

You’ll be based mainly at our Newton Park campus. Our campus buildings – which include a period manor house, gatehouse, keep, and state-of-the-art learning and performance facilities – are set in an eighteenth-century landscape complete with lake and pavilions.

With excellent links to nearby Bristol, you benefit from all the advantages of a buzzing, modern city, while being based in a beautiful, rural location just outside Bath city centre.  

You'll have access to excellent facilities including:

• Virtual Learning Environment
• Library and Digital Learning Spaces
• Writing and Learning Centre
• English Language Unit
• Specialist journals and databases
• All courses on LinkedIn Learning.

All modules can be found on our Virtual Learning Environment, Ultra, providing unlimited online access to learning materials such as handbooks, lecture slides, assessment information, discussion boards and other resources.

Our library gives you access to books, academic journals and DVDs and an extensive range of electronic services. It also provides a place for individual study and collaborative work. In addition to the Library and online access to secondary and primary resources, we draw on the University’s own archive, other archives and museum collections, and the campus itself in our teaching.