Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
This is a part-time degree that you study over two years. It's all online. You never
need to come onto the university at all and there's no exams. Which is a good thing I
think.
Which studies the military history, primarily of Europe. So the western world shall we say.
In the modern period. So we start at around 1500AD and come through to Afghanistan today.
Looking at a whole series of different aspects of the war. So for example we look at not
just the military history of what happened, but also command, how that develops over the
period, or the ethics of war, how thinking about right and wrong and war develops over
that period as well.
By going onto it as a student you tap into a very long established and successful centre
for the study of warfare here at the University of Birmingham. We've got a community of literally
hundreds of scholars, teachers and students working on the history of warfare and you
become part of that. And I think also the other thing is that because we have students
literally from all over the world, from Korea and Indonesia, all the way through to California,
interacting with a whole range of different experiences of their own that they bring in
different viewpoints.
We have a mixture of online lectures that you can watch or listen to. We have a whole
series of the core readings that you need just to get through the basics of the course.
They're all on the website so you don't need to go out and buy thousands of books or anything
like that. And obviously you have access to the University of Birmingham Library by doing
this programme. But the most interesting bit is the discussion forums when students can
come on and interact with me, or even better, with each other, to discuss various questions
that interest, either I think they're important they discuss or that they think are important
that they discuss.
We have everything from people who've just left university. From their first degrees
who want to carry on doing some academic study, but can't afford doing it full-time frankly,
doing it part-time. Through people doing it as part of their continuing professional development.
So History teachers for example who want to get a masters and get some expertise in a
particular area. All the way through to people who are just doing it for a hobby or who are
retired and now have the time to pursue an interest that they've always had.
The bit that gives me most satisfaction and I think the students get most satisfaction
out of, is the dissertation that they write at the end. It's an opportunity to do an indepth
piece of research on a subject that really interests them. At some length, so much longer
than the usual assessed essays that they do every term. But they can really get into the
guts of the subject, supervised by an expert in the field as well. And that one to one
contact and the fact that they're researching something that they're really interested in,
I think gives people a real sense of satisfaction that they've completed something very worthwhile.