Study programme

The research Master's programme History comprises two years (120 EC). A study year is divided into two semesters, running from September until January and from February until June. A semester is divided into two study periods. 

Curriculum

The programme consists of compulsory courses, electives, an internship, and a Master's thesis. Check the study schedule (PDF).

Year 1 | Compulsory courses

In the first year you will take five compulsory courses:

1. Fundamentals: perspectives and approaches across the historical discipline: In this course, experts in political history, cultural history, economic and social history, and the history of international relations introduce students to current debates in their respective fields and highlight similarities and differences in their approaches. After this course, students will have a clear perspective on the state of the art in historical research, a crucial first step in developing their own line of research.
2. Research as a Profession introduces students to vital skills for successful professional researchers and the various options and routes to work in research. Students are given the tools necessary to craft viable strategies throughout the Master’s program that will help them achieve their professional goals upon graduation.
3. History lab: tools, methods and techniques for deciphering the past provides hands-on training in the numerous methods used by historians to explore and analyze historical sources and provide fresh insights into the past. The classes are a mixture of hands-on ‘labs’ and collective discussions that encourage creative exploration and innovating thinking.
4. Research Seminar invites our students to become active researchers in ongoing projects being carried out by senior staff members at Utrecht University. Students can choose from projects in cultural history, political history, economic history, or history of international relations. By the end of this course, students will have gained intensive experience carrying out independent research in the sub-discipline of their choosing.
5. History in Practice: Research Apprenticeship encourages our students to explore their own interests with a mentor of their choosing. Each student has the freedom to select an inspiring member of staff with whom they collaboratively explore historical topics that they find mutually exciting. Students will be invited to engage with the research being carried out by their expert-teacher, while the teacher will help students find their own original research agenda as preparation for the eventual thesis.
6. Research design: crafting original projects takes students through the steps to develop a concrete plan for their thesis research project. Students begin by evaluating existing research proposals to identify strong and weak research design strategies; they then write a research proposal for their thesis and they get feedback from the course teacher to sharpen their proposal.

Please note: Course titles and descriptions may change slightly from what is noted here.

Year 1 | National research school electives

You will also choose two electives (10 EC) from a broad range of specialised courses offered by the National Research Schools focused on historical studies: the Huizinga Institute, N.W. Posthumus Institute, and Research School Political History. These courses introduce students to a wide array of topics and methods in their related historical field, giving students wide freedom to explore beyond our curriculum.

Year 2 | Master's thesis

In the first semester of the second year, you will write your research Master’s thesis, in which you demonstrate that you are able to independently contribute to a scholarly debate in your chosen field of history. Your thesis supervisor, who will be an expert in your chosen field, and our thesis coordinator will help you along the way.

Year 2 | Research internship

As the capstone to your training as a professional researcher, we help you make your first leap into the labour market with an extensive research internship, which will span the second semester of the second year. You can choose to pursue an internship in the Netherlands or abroad and can choose an internship within academia or at public or private organization. Our dedicated internship coordinator will assist you in finding the right internship to help you jumpstart your professional career in research!

Recent examples of thesis titles

• Margins for Manoeuvre in the ENDC: How small non-nuclear weapon states tried to use the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee (ENDC) to widen their position in international politics
• ‘The Chinese Miracle (?)’ Measuring China’s development in terms of well-being between 1970 and 2010
• Italia und Germania: the idea of the existence of a "shared fate" between the Italian and German processes of national unification in Italian public discourse (1848-1871)

Thesis Awards

Our students regularly produce award-winning scholarly work. Recent graduate Juul Dresen won the LovingDayNL Thesis Award 2020 with her thesis Unique encounters in liberated Limburg: A research on the interactions between African American soldiers and Dutch women in the liberation period, 1944-1945.

Educational methods

• seminar
• group work
• research internship 
• self-study 

Research internship

Our programme helps launch students into their careers as researchers. Our students gain invaluable skills, experiences and networks during their research internships. We encourage them to widely explore internship opportunities that are tailored to their unique interests and career goals. For example, they participate in academic research projects, work at institutes, museums, governmental bodies, and NGOs, to name a few.

Examinations

• research proposals
• book reviews
• academic papers
• data analysis reports
• reading reports