War: History and Politics MA (PGCert PGDip)

Why study with us? 

You should take this degree if you want to move beyond the familiar themes of conflict studies, and if you want to learn instead:

• the main ideologies and structural forces that have informed war-making since 1900 across the globe
• the most recent scholar theories from a variety of disciplines from across the humanities on the causes, forms, experience, and memory of war
• the ways in which war is promoted and normalised, and how you can challenge this.

Tuition

• Tuition is in seminar groups from a team of specialist researchers and lecturers
• Close supervision from your tutors.

The War: History and Politics MA is part of the Humanities Programme, giving you access to:

• a variety of option modules and modes of assessment so that you can pick what suits your particular interests and intellectual trajectory best
• an even greater number of open-access undergraduate lectures you might want to follow, to build up your knowledge in specific areas
• the lively and welcoming research culture of our centres for Memory, Narrative and Histories and for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics
• a vibrant postgraduate student community, active in organising workshops and reading groups.

This MA also offers:

• flexible terms for part-time study
• easy access and established contacts to local and London-based archives, such as the Mass Observation archive in Falmer, and the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth.

Areas of study

Core module

• Causes of War and Forms of Conflict

The core module is split into two themes. Causes of war provides an advanced introduction to key theories in historical and political studies on the deep origins and short term causes and justifications of modern wars and violent conflicts, looking every week at a different case study.

Forms of conflict looks in particular on how military power is imposed and sustained, and how it is resisted, using as case studies some of the most significant examples of occupation, resistance and anti-war movements across the globe. You will examine theories on imperialism, nationalism, civil war, wartime resistance, anti-colonialism, just war, pacifism, the bio-politics of war, drone warfare, terrorism and other topics from the last hundred years of warfare.

Option modules
Options for the MA are chosen from across the Humanities MA programme, giving you a wide variety of subjects to choose from.

• Professional Placements
• Causes of War: Theories and Framings
• Forms of Conflict: Domination and Resistance
• Cultural Memory in the Irish Troubles: Peace-building and the conflicted past
• Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
• Globalisation and Global Politics
• Conflict, Security and Human Rights
• Extended Essay
• Holocaust Memory
• Cultural Memory: Concepts, Theories and Methods
• ‘Race’ and Reparative Histories
• Postcolonial Heritage and Transnational Histories
• Constructing and Contesting Britishness: Histories, Cultures, Identities
• Cultural and Critical Theory (Foundations of Critical Theory)
• Cultural and Critical Theory (Traditions of Critical Theory)
• Cultural and Critical Theory (Aesthetics)

Final dissertation
For your final dissertation you can take advantage of the wide variety of specialisms that we cover across the Humanities Programme. Our external examiners have persistently praised the variety of topics covered by our students’ research projects. Recent examples include: Croatian Nationalism and the Fall of Yugoslavia in 1991; The Role of the United States in the 1973 Coup in Chile; A Critique of the Arguments for Intervention in the Recent Syrian Civil War; Gendered Violence: the Holocaust’s female victims.

War damaged buildings after the conflict in the former Yugoslavia

Meet the team 

International requirements and visas

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Visas and immigration advice

Course fees

Scholarships, bursaries and loans

We offer a range of scholarships for postgraduate students. Bursaries and loans may also be available to you.

Find out more about postgraduate fees and funding.

The fees listed here are for the first year of full-time study if you start your course in the academic year 2023–24.

You will pay fees for each year of your course. Some fees may increase each year.

UK undergraduate and some postgraduate fees are regulated by the UK government and increases will not be more than the maximum amount allowed. Course fees that are not regulated may increase each year by up to 5% or RPI (whichever is higher).

If you are studying part-time your fee will usually be calculated based on the number of modules that you take.

Find out more

• Fees, bursaries, scholarships and govt funding info for UK and international undergraduate and postgraduate students
• Student finance and budgeting while studying
• About the university’s fees by checking our student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf)

Campus where this course is taught

Accommodation

Local area

Maps

Support and wellbeing

Sport at Brighton