Economic and social history has always formed an important part of the teaching and research within the University of Cambridge's History Faculty. It is widely regarded as one of the best in the world with much pioneering work in social history, demographic history, financial history and the history of economic thought being done here. The MPhil in Economic and Social History provides extremely thorough training in statistical and social science methodology while building on other strengths such as an emphasis on researching economic relations and institutions as cultural phenomena.

The MPhil in Economic and Social History combines taught and research elements over an 11-month full-time programme which includes taught modules, training in social science research methods encompassing quantitative and qualitative analytical tools, and a long piece of independent research (15,000–20,000 words).

Throughout the course, students will be supervised by a dedicated member of staff, who will guide their research towards the completion of an original historical subject chosen and developed by them. In addition, students will benefit from Cambridge’s vibrant research environment, attending and participating in seminars, workshops, and other events throughout the year.

The course is designed for those who have completed degrees in which history is the main or at least a substantial component and who want to consolidate their knowledge of economic and social history. It is particularly appropriate for those who may wish to continue to a PhD, at Cambridge or elsewhere, but it is also well-suited for those who seek simply to explore economic and social history at a deeper level.

The MPhil in Earth Sciences is a 12-month full-time programme of research that introduces students to research skills and specialist knowledge. It involves carrying out an original piece of research and is examined on the basis of a thesis; there are no taught courses. This MPhil by Research will provide you with a suitable background to work as a research assistant as well as with the grounding for further study towards a doctoral-level research degree.

If you are exploring the possibility of postgraduate study at the Department of Earth Sciences in Cambridge, you will:

• have either done an undergraduate degree in an earth science or geoscience subject or perhaps want to use your degree from another science subject such as physics, chemistry, mathematics or biological sciences;

• relish the stimulus of one of the UK's premier research departments.

If you are considering applying, please use the 'Research' section of the department website to identify a member of our academic staff working in an area of interest. Before making an application you should contact them to discuss your interests.

Educational Aims

The main aims are:

• to give students with relevant experience at a first-degree level the opportunity to carry out focussed research in the discipline under close supervision; and

• to give students the opportunity to acquire or develop skills and expertise relevant to their research interests.

If you are exploring the possibility of a PhD degree in Earth Sciences, you will:

• have either done an undergraduate degree in an earth science subject or, perhaps, want to use your degree from another science subject such as physics, chemistry, mathematics or biological sciences
• be relishing the stimulus of one of the UK's premier research departments

Our students are greatly sought-after. Over the last five years, about 25% of our 80 PhD postgraduates have gone to careers in the commercial sector, 25% to research fellowships, 30% to work on research grants and contracts, 10% directly into university teaching posts and 10% into non-scientific posts including the civil service. Many of the research fellows have also subsequently gone into industry, university and research institute posts.

Please note: part-time study may not always be viable and will be considered on a case-by-case basis, so please discuss this option with your proposed supervisor before applying for this mode of study.

The MASt in Earth Sciences aims to train to master's-level students who already have a bachelors' degree in Earth Sciences or Geological sciences. It is a predominantly taught course in which candidates work alongside the fourth-year students taking the integrated Cambridge BA/MSci Earth Sciences course. It is intended for students planning a career, further training, or research within Earth Sciences, or for other students wanting the intellectual challenge of an advanced course in the Earth Sciences.

The specific aims are:

• to expose advanced students to the breadth of the Earth Sciences through a combination of seminars, course work and field teaching;
• to provide 'state-of-the-art' knowledge of specific areas in the Earth Sciences through a combination of seminars, course work, and faculty-supervised independent research;
• to develop the conceptual and practical skills necessary for independent research;
• to develop communication and presentation skills to an advanced level.

The MPhil provides intensive training in studying the history of Britain, Europe and the wider world between c.1500 and c.1800. It equips students to write a substantial and significant piece of historical research. This stretching course is designed for those who have taken undergraduate degrees and who now wish to consolidate their knowledge of the early modern period. By examining traditional and innovative methods and interpretations, the course aims to enhance understanding of how early modern history has been conceived and practised.

The course combines taught and research elements over a nine-month full-time programme. The taught element comprises a core course, taken by all students; specialist courses on themes within the period, from which students choose; and various training courses, covering languages and palaeography. Students work towards their own long piece of independent research. The course culminates in the submission of this dissertation.

Throughout the course, students will be supervised by a dedicated member of staff. The supervisor will guide research into an original historical subject chosen and developed by the student. In addition, students will benefit from the stimulus of Cambridge’s bustling research culture. They will be encouraged to attend the several seminar series run on early modern history and the many other relevant talks, workshops, and events that the Faculty and wider University offer.

The course is designed for those who (will) have completed undergraduate degrees in which history is either the sole or the main component. It is particularly appropriate for those who may wish to continue to a PhD, whether at Cambridge or elsewhere. The course is the normal means by which those without an appropriate master’s degree prepare for doctoral study in early modern history at Cambridge. The course is also intended for those seeking to explore early modern history more deeply as a subject of research: it is a rewarding programme of study in its own right.

Cambridge early modernists hold positions in British and foreign universities and have pursued careers in many other fields (including business, education, government, media, and the law).

The BusD is an advanced and ambitious programme that creates impactful research by leveraging the seniority, unique access to context and data, and exceptional experience of its students.

The programme enables students with significant experience at senior executive level to demonstrate an intellectual achievement at the highest level and thereby become better, more effective and more reflective leaders. Students will carry out high-calibre impact-orientated research that is of particular relevance for experienced senior managers at the highest level of the management profession. The degree is relevant to practice, facilitating transformational leadership in organisations. The BusD also emphasises continuing, life-long education.

The workload of the programme is substantial and demanding, as students will carry out their research while embedded within the work environment. Total workload is equivalent to that of a full-time PhD programme.

The MPhil in Digital Policy provides a firm foundation for understanding the challenges and possibilities posed by digital transformation, aimed at policy professionals in the UK and overseas who have embarked on or are embarking on a policy career. The course is interdisciplinary, spanning political science, economics, law and computer science. The course aims to provide students with the opportunity to develop their powers of critical thinking and the skills and tools to form judgements based on wide ranges of information with varying degrees of uncertainty, and act on them. The course will also train students to understand how others operate and how to work with them to achieve a desired outcome.

The MPhil in Digital Policy is primarily a professional Master's course.

The PhD in Digital Humanities, run by Cambridge Digital Humanities and based in the Faculty of English, is a research-intensive programme that will enable students to engage at doctoral level with projects demanding the use of digital methods and tools or adopting critical/theoretical orientations. The programme expands the humanities offering at research postgraduate level at Cambridge by offering a route for cross-disciplinary engagement, responding to the growth of the field of Digital Humanities as a research area.

The programme is designed to enable students from many areas of the arts and humanities to develop practical skills and knowledge and to generate the necessary critical literacy to understand and engage with digital research, and digital cultures, and to respond to questions that arise around AI, the ethics of automation, algorithmic analysis, privacy/surveillance, online cultures, data sharing, intelligent agency and creativity, archival justice and digital histories, and to explore work in relation to collections and heritage issues. Through supervisions and technical support from a research software engineer, contextualised by a research culture providing research-led seminars and lectures, guest seminars, and practice-driven workshops, Cambridge Digital Humanities provides the conditions for original PhD research in DH or in other arts and humanities/social science disciplines that make a significant intervention into shaping the field.

The course aims to:

• Enable students to engage at doctoral level with projects that require the use and generation of digital methods, tools, approaches, and/or of critical/theoretical orientations.
• Expand the humanities offering at research postgraduate level at Cambridge by providing a cross-disciplinary route for engagement, responding to the growth of the field of Digital Humanities as a research area.
• Enable humanities and social science-trained students to develop critical literacy and practical skills and knowledge to understand and engage with digital materials and methods for studying matters relevant to the humanities.
• Provide the conditions to enable the production of original PhD research in Digital Humanities or other arts and humanities/social science disciplines that make a significant intervention into shaping the field.
• Respond to the need for the humanities to grapple with emerging forms, practices, and social formations shaped in a digital age.

The course will benefit the students:

• With relevant MPhils who want to engage with the field of Digital Humanities, enabling them to hone critical and methodological skills, develop new approaches, test them out, and specialise.
• Locating themselves in other home disciplines who wish to develop advanced projects, including Digital Humanities approaches and orientations.
• Entering into or returning to other careers in GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums), creative industries, digital media industries, and media arts by giving them advanced critical perspectives, practical digital literacies, and methodological insights to pursue these pathways.

The MPhil in Digital Humanities is directed by Cambridge Digital Humanities (CDH), a research centre with links across a wide range of faculties and units at Cambridge. The course is administered by the Faculty of English.

This exciting MPhil explores the ways in which the humanities engage with the processes of digital transformation, digital futures, digital research, and digital cultures, as questions arise around AI, ethics of automation, algorithmic analysis, privacy/surveillance, online cultures, data sharing, intelligent agency and creativity, archival justice and digital histories, collections and heritage issues.

The course gives students critical/theoretical orientations and delivers a structured form of engagement with digital methods, tools, and approaches while enabling flexibility in terms of specialism. Students may come from multiple disciplines and the course caters to different skill levels in DH methods. Students take two broad core courses – Digital Humanities Approaches and Methods, and Critical Technical Practice – and follow two courses from a basket of more specialist options. The course is assessed through shorter essays and a year-long dissertation or portfolio project.

This course aims:

• to give students a structured form of engagement with critical/theoretical orientations and digital methodologies and tools To expand the humanities offering at taught post-graduate level at Cambridge by offering a route for cross-disciplinary engagement and the development of new skills and knowledges for a cohort spanning humanities areas as broadly conceived field. The course responds to the growth of the field of Digital Humanities both as a research area and as a teaching location;
• to enable humanities/social science trained students to develop the critical literacy and practical skills and knowledges to understand and engage with digital materials and digital methods for the study of matters relevant to the humanities; and
• to respond to the need for the humanities to grapple with emerging forms, practices, and social formations shaped in a digital age.
• The course responds to the growing recognition that humanities engagement with digital futures is necessary particularly as questions arise around the ethics of automation, algorithmic analysis, privacy/surveillance, virtual cultures, data sharing, intelligent agency and creativity, archival justice, digital histories.
• The course responds to the pervasive shift to the digital, to the need to train postgraduates with an understanding of the stakes of new forms of mediated communication, cultural production, modes of social being, and epistemic cultures that these produce.
• The course responds to the needs of the creative industries/media industries/heritage industries for appropriately trained postgraduates able to address the transformations of the digital on their sectors.

The course will benefit:

• students seeking to stay with the field of DH at doctoral level and beyond – by enabling them to hone their critical and methodological skills, develop new approaches and test them out, and specialise;
• students who will take their learning back into home disciplines – by giving them the critical and practical digital literacy to inform future research at doctoral level and beyond;
• students entering other careers – in GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums), creative industries, digital media industries, media arts – by giving them the critical perspectives, practical digital literacies, and methodological insights to pursue these pathways.

Studying for a PhD at the the Centre of Development Studies situates you in a community of diverse scholars who bring together the analytical rigour required of economists and other social scientists today, and the recognition that no important issue in development — poverty and inequality, population growth, the construction of the institutions of a market economy, war and human rights, democratisation — can be properly understood without an inter-disciplinary perspective. You can find out more about the wide range of research undertaken by current PhD students as well as by our academic staff on our website.

All students will take a compulsory Research Methods course in the first year. Students are also encouraged to attend a wide range of seminars and other events organised by the Centre of Development Studies and departments throughout the University, such as the Social Sciences Research Methods Centre.

The essence of the Cambridge experience, however, is that the PhD candidate works closely with the PhD Supervisor. The Supervisor helps the candidate develop the thesis project through discussion and review of draft materials presented by the candidate.

The process of working on the thesis will differ from candidate to candidate, depending on their project, their preferences, and the style of supervision adopted. However, in general, it is expected that the first year (or two years in the case of part-time students) will be devoted not only to completing the Research Methods modules but also to the development of a detailed and well-thought-through thesis outline and methodology. In particular, at the outset, the student should devote some time to considering how they will be making an original contribution to the field through their work. The students will be assessed on this before they are approved for PhD status.

It is important to note that the part-time PhD at Cambridge is not a distance-learning course. Part-time students are expected to fully engage with the department, integrate into the University's research culture, and regularly attend the University for supervision, study, skills training, research seminars, and workshops.

Part-time applicants from outside the UK should note that visa restrictions may apply and that not all sources of funding are available to part-time students. It is the student's responsibility to find out this information.