Research topics

MA by Research topics offered by History Staff

Children and childhood in Vichy: history and memory, c1940-c1944.
Children and childhood in Britain during World War II: history and memory, c1939-c1945.

Urban elites and city governance in Leeds/Sheffield/Huddersfield or other towns/cities 1900-40.
Hospital provision and politics before the NHS in a specific urban area (your choice) with particular reference to voluntary/municipal integration.
Gender and healthcare in an urban setting 1880-1950.

Gender and lay piety in late medieval England (masculine or feminine).
Clerical identities in late medieval England (e.g. royal clerks/academics and university scholars/ecclesiastical lawyers/town and parish clerks).
Sanctity and the parochial clergy in late medieval England.

Shell shock and representations of madness in the Great War and after.
The management of madness in the 19th or 20th Century (in an area and period of your choice).
Children in institutions in the 19th or 20th Century (in an area and period of your choice).

Mass graves on medieval and early modern English battlefields (including analysis of the documentary evidence for their location and character).
The terrain within which battles of the Wars of the Roses were fought (with particular reference to the evidence from chronicle accounts).
Artillery on the battlefields of the English Civil War (the evidence from battle accounts and supply records).

Humanitarian organisations in modern war (with a choice of conflict and organisations).
The British Red Cross Society in the interwar period and / or Second World War.
Child work and education in the First World War.

Labour (trade union and political, ILP, socialists etc) c1800 to the present
19th and 20th Century social policy of Britain, and particularly anything on voluntary organisations
Policing in Britain in the 19th and 20th Centuries (also interests in the landscape of childhood connected with policing)
Gambling in Britain in the 20th Century
Women – social and political developments c1900 to 1950.

Later medieval chronicles (c1100-1500) with a particular focus on issues of identity and/or the appropriation of the past to serve political and socio-cultural purposes (either a single author/chronicle, or the comparison of two or more authors/chronicles).
Crusading and gender (as this pertains to men and/or women, either focussing on a particular individual/group, or on representations of masculinity/femininity within specific narrative sources, which could include romances and saints’ lives as well as chronicles).
The afterlife of medieval saints (the representation and veneration of an individual saint or type of saint post-Reformation).

German and European history, c1880—1960s, esp. in the area of history of science, technology and medicine; such as industrial hygiene, military medicine (eg aviation medicine) or history of IT.
Historical Geography of Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
History of European anti-Semitism in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
Methods and aspects of public history, esp. online projects; such as Social Media use for history, websites/blogs or smartphone apps.
All aspects (ie methods, technology or theory) of Digital History/Humanities, such as the use of Geo-Information Systems, Social Network Analysis or Text Mining for historical scholarship, or a critique thereof.

Aspects of political and social history of the Channel Islands, 1400-1640, esp. perceptions of the islands in England, and engagements by islands with English political, governmental, legal and social systems.
Ancient prophecy in early modern England, esp. local traditions in the north of England and their political implications.
Aspects of political society related to the palatinate of Chester, including gentry and other interactions with the palatinate, and attitudes to Cheshire.

British Second World War propaganda.
Migration to Britain, 1939-65.
British cinema 1930s-1965 (e.g. The RAF on film from The Lion Has Wings (1939) to The Battle of Britain (1969)).