War: History and Politics MA (PGCert PGDip)

International equivalencies

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

Why study with us?

Studying this degree you will acquire expertise on:

• War and conflict studies
• Modern international history
• Interdisciplinary learning and researching

You will be taught in a truly interdisciplinary manner, utilising a number of disciplines: cultural and social history, politics and international relations. You can build the degree structure that suits best your interests and future plans.

You can specialise in particular disciplines, or you can explore a wide range of new methods. You will also have the choice of three different types of elective work (e.g. extended essays or primary-source based seminars). Our students can also use the nearby world-famous Mass Observation archive. They also tend to be involved in the events and research projects run by the University of Brighton’s Understanding Conflict cluster, such as our latest initiative on ‘Contesting Britain at War’.

We offer flexible modes of study for those with personal or professional commitments. After finishing the MA you will be able to pursue a wide range of careers as well as opportunities for further postgraduate research.

Soviet propaganda from the Cold War

Areas of study

There are two Core Modules that you will have to take, one on the forms and one on the legacies of war. ‘Forms of Warfare and Violent Conflict’ examines the lead up to war and what is happening in wartime. It looks at: the political, ideological and wider structural causes of war; the human experience at the home-front and at the war-front; the politics and methods of warfare as they have evolved in time; the different modes of practical, political, and intellectual resistance against invasion and occupation. ‘Legacies of Warfare and Violent Conflict’ looks at the impact of war, at what is left after a conflict: the emotional and personal effects of war; how a conflict continues to exist on material and psychological landscapes; the multiple ways through which personal, collective and global memories of killing and sacrifice are constructed; the politics of what we decide to remember and what to forget; the activist, political and theoretical efforts to stop war from happening again.

Beyond the two Core Modules you can also pick a number of option courses that relate to you interests, for example: Public History and Heritage; Cultural Memory; ‘Race’, Nation and Ethnicity; Globalisation and Global Politics; Conflict, Security and Human Rights; Genocide; International Relations theory; Aesthetics and Philosophy; Cultural Theory; Philosophy and Critical Theory. Alternatively you might want instead to research and write a stand-alone extended essay, or you may opt for a more practical-based unit on teaching and learning higher education, offering you the opportunity to learn more about undergraduate teaching. 

You will also take a Research Methods module that will help you develop the academic skills necessary to engage in the 20,000-word Dissertation, for which you are guided by one of our faculty with subject expertise.

War damaged buildings after the conflict in the former Yugoslavia

Staff profile

Dr Eugene Michail
Course leader

Dr Eugene Michail is the course leader of the MA in War: History and Politics. He is a senior lecturer in contemporary European history, specialising on Germany, Greece and the Balkans, and on transnational themes. He is currently writing on the political aims of the Greek Resistance against Nazi occupation, while his new project is on the history of migrants and refugees in modern Europe. His book The British And The Balkans: Forming Images Of Foreign Lands, 1900-1950 was published in 2011.

Some of his recent publications on the themes of war and conflict are: 
 ‘The Balkan Wars in Western Historiography, 1912-2000’, in Katrin Böckh and Sabine Rutar (eds), The Balkan Wars 1912-1913: Experience, Perception, Remembrance (Palgrave: 2016) 
 ‘Western Attitudes to War in the Balkans and the Shifting Meanings of Violence, 1912-1991’, Journal of Contemporary History, 47/2 (2012), 219-39 ‘“A Sting of Remembrance!”: Collective Memory and its Forgotten Armies’, in  Jessica Meyer (ed), First World War and Popular Culture (Brill, 2008), 237-57. 

Location

Campus where this course is taught

Accommodation

Maps

Accommodation

University building

Grand Parade campus map