Approaching the Past

Course Overview

Whatever course you choose in history, classics and archaeology, you will be joining a community of students and researchers dedicated to understanding the past. Whether your interest is in people who lived two, 200, 2000 or 10,000 years ago, our Approaching the Past short course is designed to equip you with the skills to identify, investigate and interpret the traces they left of themselves and their societies.

This course helps you to take your first steps, as a historian, classicist or archaeologist, in understanding and explaining the past in a scholarly way. How do we work with original documents and objects and combine these with synthesis provided by specialists in our own and other fields? How do we locate information and show where we found our information? How do we take in, process and use the huge volume of information - from lectures, readings and seminars - that will shape our understanding of the past?

This short course will help you to apply scholarly rigour in all of your work and to think about the past through the theme of ‘the city’ and the city of London in particular. It will introduce you to our staff members and to our unique and exciting research culture. It will give you the chance to develop friendships, to share ideas, research development and writing.

During the course you will learn the following core skills:

• Note taking
• Speed reading
• Summarising an article
• Understanding types of publication
• Referencing
• Primary and secondary sources

Assessment is via a 1000-word workshop journal (25%) and 1500-word essay (75%).

This can be taken as a standalone short course or as part of:

• Politics and International Studies (Certificate of Higher Education)

Credits: 30 credits at level 4