The M. Phil. in Public History and Cultural Heritage

Download the Brochure (PDF, 299kb)

National Library of Ireland Bursaries

In support of this initiative, the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and the National Library of Ireland are this year offering a limited number of bursaries to be set against fees. Successful applicants will be considered for the awards.

Overview

The M. Phil. degree in Public History and Cultural History is a new programme that has been designed to give its students a thorough grounding in public history and to provide them with a unique preparation for the management of cultural heritage.

‘Public history’ and ‘cultural heritage’ are broadly defined: the programme will involve the study of cultural memory, its construction, reception and loss, and of the public status of history in modern society. It will examine the political issues surrounding public commemoration and ‘sites of memory’; the role of museums, archives, galleries and the media in shaping public perceptions of the past. And it will survey the more concrete questions involved in the conservation, presentation and communication of the physical heritage of past cultures, particularly where interpretation and meaning are contested.

The course has been designed to act as a bridge between Humanities disciplines in the university, and the professional and creative concerns of cultural institutions (the research libraries, galleries, museums and archives), both in Ireland and beyond. It is a programme combining theoretical and practical elements that provides students with a rigorous training in research methods and relevant skills. It exploits the diversity of relevant research expertise across the disciplines in the TCD Schools of Histories & Humanities and of Languages, Literatures & Cultural Studies. The course draws on Trinity College Library’s great strengths and on the close proximity of the main national cultural institutions that are collaborating in the programme (including the National Library of Ireland, the National Museum of Ireland, the Hugh Lane Gallery and the Chester Beatty Library).

Aims

The course aims to provide graduates with a critical awareness of key issues and questions in the fields of public history and cultural heritage, and a firm foundation for engaging in empirical research in these fields. Students will be trained in the analysis and presentation of their research findings and introduced to the methodological challenges of conducting research at postgraduate level.

Students who complete this course will have gained a new understanding as to how a sense of the past, personally, communally, nationally and internationally, has been central to the construction of social identity in modern societies. They will also come to appreciate how competing narratives of the past have influenced the contemporary world. They will gain an insight into how state authority in ancient and modern times has used a variety of cultural media (from history text-books and commemorative monuments to national museums) to assert an interpretation of the past and to privilege certain historical events over others. They will have studied the diversity of approaches to the definition of ‘cultural heritage’ and the policy consequences of different definitions. They will have engaged with the extensive recent literature on collective historical memory and with the controversies associated with it. They will gain an understanding of the potential of digitization to transform the public’s engagement with history, and the basic skills needed to create, deliver and sustain web-based and multimedia products in this field. They will have had the opportunity to study curatorial theory.

Core modules will provide a rich introduction to the field, while a variety of elective modules, some comparative, some quite specific, will span the participating disciplines (History, History of Art & Architecture, Classics, and European Studies). Each module within the programme introduces students to a defined theme or problem, providing a tightly focused introduction to a range of interpretative problems and current debates. Through exploring these issues, approaches and methodologies, the M.Phil. degree is designed to equip students with both the analytical and practical skills required for independent research. Students will enroll in a short placement, either in one of the collaborating cultural institutions and enterprises or within TCD, and will submit a dissertation which may draw on that experience. Students may have the opportunity to participate in exhibition projects (some in collaboration with cultural institutions and enterprises, some virtual and hosted within the College).

With so many national and international anniversaries occurring over the next two decades (in Ireland itself, the Easter Rising, the War of Independence, the Civil War and, internationally, the Great War and the Russian Revolution), there will be an opportunity for graduates of this programme to participate in what will undoubtedly be a series of highly charged public debates. We hope that the comparative and reflective charater of this degree will have some impact on the shape of future public history, at least in Ireland, encouraging innovative and creative responses to the challenge of public commemoration of contested history. Related to this, technology and the expanding digital enviroment are opening up dramatic new ways for the public sharing of history, giving unprecedented access to the collections in our libraries, musuems and archives and providing innovative ways of interacting with the materials of history.

The course seeks to provide a distinctive philosophical, ethical and historical training. And while not providing a comprehensive vocational training for prospective curators, museum education officers or cultural policy makers, it is envisaged that graduates of the course will be well placed to pursue a multiplicity of careers in the museum and cultural sector, whether as curators, collection managers, education officers, or media and public relations specialists. For those already working in these sectors it will, it is hoped, enrich their knowledge and skills, stimulate lateral thinking and act as a spur to innovation. For graduates of the course there is the possibility of proceeding to a doctoral research project in one of the thematic strands.

Learning Outcomes:

On successful completion of the course students should be able to:

• critically analyse a range of printed and visual sources, archives, exhibitions, and museum objects with their associated texts;
• evaluate the context for the interpretation of texts, artefacts and art;
• engage with relevant theoretical and critical approaches, and apply them to the study of public perceptions of the past;
• engage in scholarly activity, either autonomously or as part of a research team;
• verbally present and discuss research results in a scholarly fashion;
• conceive and carry out a programme of scholarly research and write-up analysis of research results.

Applications

An application can be now made via the Postgraduate Application Centre (external). This will be assessed in due course by the Coordinating Committee for the degree programme, and places will be offered accordingly. Due to the limited number of places on the course it may be necessary to call short-listed candidates for interview. Further information on entry requirements, application and fees.

To download the course brochure please click here (PDF, 586kb)