M.A.- Heritage Management

Overview 

You’ll explore how heritage sites are managed, presented and explained. We’ll teach you to consider their value beyond something to see or a place to visit.

What challenges are heritage bodies currently facing? What choices do they make in dealing with them? How will pressures on public funding for heritage in the UK – and further afield – shape our experience of visiting and working in museums and heritage sites in the future? And how will our wider understanding of heritage change as a result?

Trying to answer such questions provides a framework for practical work in the sector, underpinned by hands-on, supportive teaching. We want you to become involved in a range of projects, working with our extensive range of partners, and to gain experience on the ground.

Course Structure 

Trimester one provides the foundation for your subsequent study. We'll explore changing and contested ideas about the nature of heritage, examine the social, political, and economic context in which heritage is defined and managed, and consider the best of current practice through a series of workshops. These are led by some of the best professionals in the sector, many of whom will continue to offer you support and advice.

Trimester two tests how far your thinking has developed. You'll plan and undertake an independent research project, which allows you to ask key questions about an aspect of current practice that most inspires or concerns you. In parallel with this, you will complete a 25-day placement with one of our many partners in the sector.

Trimester three marks the culmination of your studies, the chance to complete an extended piece of research through a dissertation or to design and deliver a new project in collaboration with a heritage site, museum, archive or community group, or to work with artists and teachers, health professionals and developers.

Part-time students follow the same sequence of modules, but do so over two years, working from theory to practice and assessing both in relation to one another.