Information for Prospective Postgraduates

Postgraduate Research Degrees: the MPhil and PhD

The M.Phil and Ph.D degrees are research-based degrees, in which students undertake individual research projects under close academic supervision from within the department. They can be studied full- or part-time. The M.Phil normally takes one year of full-time research (two years part-time), after which students complete and submit a dissertation of around 60,000 words. The Ph.D normally takes three years of full-time research (five years part-time), after which students complete and submit a dissertation of 80-100,000 words. The average total duration of the degree (full-time) therefore tends to be around two years for an M.Phil and between three and four years for a Ph.D.

Those interested in these possibilities are encouraged to contact the Postgraduate Tutor so that a viable research topic can be evolved through discussion with members of staff. Current staff research interests are listed at Members of the Department and their interests, and members of the department are always happy to consider research proposals relating to any aspect of their period of expertise, and to discuss with applicants the appropriate sources and methodologies for their project.

Recent Postgraduate Research Degrees

An illustrative sample of research degrees recently awarded by the Department is listed below:

M.Phil:

  • The social and economic history of the parish of Penderyn, Breconshire, 1500-1851 (Ann Selwood, 2001)
  • Making shift: independent single women in south-west Wales during the eighteenth century (Lesley Davidson, 2001)
  • Bywyd a gwaith David Thomas, 1880-1967 (The life and work of socialist agitator David Thomas, 1880-1967) (Angharad Tomos, 2000)
  • Christian missions in the age of New Imperialism: the Church Missionary Society in Uganda (Scott Whitehouse, 2001)
  • Change or continuity: the social composition of the Conservative Party 1900-1950 (Sarah Parkinson, 2001)

Ph.D:

  • Society, government and power in the Lordship of Blakemore, north Shropshire c.1350-c.1420 (Francesca Bumpus, 1998)
  • The representation of aggression in the seventeenth-century English broadside ballad (Sarah Todd, 1999)
  • Aspects of female gentility in eighteenth-century North Wales (Simone Clarke, 1999)
  • Welsh Methodism and the international evangelical revival 1735-1750 (David Ceri Jones, 2001)
  • An early Imperial problem: Britain and Ireland 1750-1783 (Martyn Powell, 1997)
  • The causes and effects of tourism in North Wales 1750-1850 (Peter H. Williams, 2000)
  • The history of the Welsh Jewish communities, 1750 to the present (David Morris, 1999)
  • Public health and the growth of local institutions in Wales c,1810-1914 (Owen Roberts, 2004)
  • Pulpits, coalpits and fleapits: a social history of the cinema in Wales (Peter Miskell, 2000)
  • A Social History of Health in Interwar South Wales (Steven Thompson, 2001)
  • The police in north Wales, c.1840-2000 (Henry K. Birch, 2002)