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History

BA (Hons)

Undergraduate degree - single or combined honours

Award
BA (Hons) History
School/s
School of Writing, Publishing and the Humanities
Campus or location
Newton Park
Course length
Three years full time, or four years full time with professional placement year. Part time available.
UCAS codes
Institution Code: B20
Course Code: V100 or S171
Campus Code: A,BSU

Entry requirements

We accept a wide range of qualifications for entry to our undergraduate programmes. The main ones are listed under 'Typical offers' in the main column below. For combined courses, please check both subjects. If your qualification is not listed, please email admissions@bathspa.ac.uk with your specific details.

Fascinated by the past? Want to make a difference in the present? Develop practical and professional skills with our applied History degree.

  • Develop practical and professional skills and apply them to contemporary challenges, issues and debates.
  • Use your understanding of evidence and your ability to analyse information to solve problems and challenge convention.
  • Explore the next stage in your career - our graduates have gone on to work with leading employers in a wide range of different roles.

Apply your knowledge of History to contemporary challenges, issues and debates. Our innovative History degree has been designed to enable you to acquire specialised subject knowledge alongisde practical and professional skills.

Our History course is inspiring, innovative and compelling. Our Newton Park campus is beautiful, but it’s also a historic resource in its own right and a way into a wide range of historical subjects and approaches – from reading a landscape to analysing the symbols of wealth and power and tracing their international connections.

The nearby cities of Bath and Bristol offer an extraordinary wealth of material for historical study. Bristol, after all, is where the statue of Edward Colston was toppled into the river, and made us all reflect on the ways history continues to shape the present; we need to understand where we’ve been to have a sense of where we might go next.

Develop practical and professional skills

Working collaboratively with a wide range of disciplines, we offer a unique approach to learning in and outside your subject.

You’ll become a confident communicator, able to sift through the raw materials of history and re-present your findings to any audience – on any platform. Yes, you’ll write essays. But you’ll also learn to podcast, tweet, blog, create scripts for film and radio, and adapt your style to suit a range of consumers, including young audiences. We also want you to be able to plan and initiate projects, work with your peers and with our external partners, and make a contribution to our wider community.

Our programmes are taught by people whose research embraces past and present, abstract concepts and physical structures. It crosses continents. You'll analyse big data and tiny fragments of text, and explore objects and images, the rhetoric of power, the gaps in the narrative. 

What can you do with a History degree?

Our research has impact internationally, nationally and locally. Our teaching draws on this and on our work as policy advisors, trustees, fundraisers, advocates, curators, conservators, broadcasters, game designers, web editors, poets. Our graduates go on to do all of these things – and more.


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What you'll learn

Overview

Our practical, applied History degree combines the academic study of history with skill-based modules. You could find yourself learning to write a funding application for one of your modules, pitching ideas to one of our partner organisations for another, and sifting through primary archival sources in a third.

You’ll gain broad historical skills and expertise – how to read historical texts; how to use a wide range of historical sources; how to discuss and debate historical subjects and concepts. You’ll also learn to analyse, process information, make decisions, manage projects, network, collaborate, and work with experts inside and outside the University.

Course structure

Year one
Introductions and foundations: develop your historical skills and follow a broad curriculum which allows you to ask questions, challenge your own assumptions, interrogate evidence, data and opinions.

Year two
Practical, applied, relevant: this year combines the academic study of your chosen topics with the acquisition of professional skills and the application of your knowledge and understanding to a defined problem or idea.

Year three
Achievement, consolidation, creativity: your final project in the third year brings all this together. You’ll identify your own historical questions, develop your proposal and put it into practice. This might be an extended piece of academic writing, but it might also be an exhibition, community project, or the creation of digital resources.

How will I be assessed?

We’ll assess your progress in a variety of ways including essays, research papers, group presentations, projects, portfolios, and reports. There are timed assessments and some modules may have end-of-year examinations.

Our assessment methods allow you to develop and demonstrate different skills. Many of these will help you in the workplace, for example: planning ahead, working to deadlines, and managing priorities.

Remember that you’ll be devising your own projects and research questions, giving you the freedom to develop your own expertise, supported by your tutors, our partners and your peers.

How will I be taught?

You’ll get to grips with your subject through lectures, seminars, workshops, and individual tutorials.

You can take advantage of the learning support provided across the University, whether to develop your writing skills or to learn how to use new techniques and technologies.

To find out more about how we teach and how you'll learn, please read our Learning and Teaching Delivery Statement.

Course modules

This course offers or includes the following modules. The modules you take will depend on your pathway or course combination (if applicable) as well as any optional or open modules chosen. Please check the programme document for more information.

Year one (Level 4) modules
  • Europe and the World I: Encounters and Perspectives
  • Europe and the World II: Revolution, Nationalism and Modernity
  • Worlds of Ideas
  • Narratives of Belonging
  • Protest and Persuasion
  • Thinking Together: Humanities in the 21st Century
Year two (Level 5) modules
  • The Practice of History: Archives, Analysis, Evidence
  • Presenting the Past
  • Intangible Histories (Level 5)
  • How to do Things: Objects, People and Place
  • People, Politics and Belief in Early Modern Britain
  • Diaspora, Migration and Race
  • Digital Humanities
  • Working Together
  • Transformative Communities
  • Professional Placement Year
Year three (Level 6) modules
  • History Project
  • Conflict and Community: The Politics of Heritage
  • The Past as Professional Practice: Archaeology, Museums and Heritage
  • Growing up in a global world: 'Youth' in the 20th and 21st centuries
  • Intangible Histories (Level 6)
  • People, the Past and the Environment
  • Nation and Race in the Early Modern Atlantic World
  • Propaganda, Censorship and Intelligence
  • Suffrage, Status and Society
  • Global Empires
  • The Cold War on the Periphery

Opportunities

Study abroad

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

Fieldwork

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

Work placements, industry links and internships

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.

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.

Careers

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

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 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 worked for the National Trust, Bristol Old Vic and the Southbank Centre.

Global Citizenship

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.

Adobe Creative Campus

Develop a wealth of indispensable digital skills that you can take into your future career. One of only three Adobe Creative Campuses in the UK, we provide all Bath Spa students with access to the full Adobe Creative Suite, giving you the tools to communicate creatively, whatever your course or chosen professional field.   

Professional placement year

Overview

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.

Preparation

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.

How will I be assessed?

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.

The PPY Bursary

Aiming to make work experience more accessible, we have introduced the PPY Bursary. Students undertaking a PPY can receive between £500 and £1,500 to be used towards placement costs such as travel, food, workwear or accommodation.

For more information and details of eligibility criteria, please visit the PPY Bursary webpage.

Facilities and resources

Where the subject is taught

Our campus is a historic resource in its own right. 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:

Resources

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.

Fees

2024 entry
Student Annual tuition fee
UK full time £9,250
UK part time £4,625
International full time £15,750

Professional Placement Year

During the placement year, the fee is reduced to 20% of the full time fee. This applies to UK and EU/International students.

  • UK: £1,850
  • International: £3,150

Additional course costs

You may need to pay additional course costs over and above your tuition fees, for example, for specialist equipment or trips and visits. Please check the course Programme Document (linked under the main image on this page) for details of any additional costs. You can also read our Additional Course Costs Policy for further information.

Interested in applying?

What we look for in potential students

You’ll have a passion for the subject, a curiosity for the sources of things, and how they inform our present, a commitment to finding out more, and a willingness to try new things. You may already have some great ideas about what you like to do and where you’d like to focus. Or you might want to look at historical topics in new ways, and explore aspects of the past you haven’t encountered before.

Typical offers

We accept a wide range of qualifications for entry to our undergraduate programmes. The main ones are listed below:

  • A Level – grades BBB-BCC usually including a Grade B in History or a related subject.
  • BTEC – Extended Diploma grades from Distinction Distinction Merit (DDM) to Distinction Merit Merit (DMM) in a related subject.
  • T Levels – grade Merit preferred in a relevant subject.
  • International Baccalaureate – a minimum of 32 points are required with a minimum of grade 5 in History or a related subject at Higher Level.
  • Access to HE courses – typical offers for applicants with Access to HE will be the Access to HE Diploma or Access to HE Certificate (60 credits, 45 of which must be Level 3, at Merit or higher).

If you don’t meet the entry requirements above, we may be able to accept your prior learning or experience from outside of formal education. See our Accreditation of Prior Learning (APL) page to learn more.

English Language Requirements for International and EU Applicants

IELTS 6.0 - for visa nationals, with a minimum score of IELTS 5.5 in each element.

Course enquiries

For further information about the programme or entry requirements, please email us at admissions@bathspa.ac.uk.

How do I apply?

Ready to apply? Click the 'apply now' button in the centre of this page.

Need more guidance? Head to our how to apply pages.

Get ahead

We encounter the past every day, in news stories and current events; in political speeches and parliamentary debates; in the places around us. You can get ahead simply by listening, looking, and thinking about all of these. If you’d like to do some reading as well, here are some suggestions:

  • Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, 1997
  • Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, 2015
  • Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, 2014

Programme Coordinator: Allyson Edwards
Email: a.edwards@bathspa.ac.uk

Three year course
With placement year

Website feedback to web@bathspa.ac.uk