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What makes History and Journalism at Worcester special?

Studying History and Journalism in combination allows you to explore the practical business of conducting research and communicating about events from the past and present day. You’ll gain analytical skills through examining a range of sources and texts and learn how to interpret information and present it in an engaging way.

The joint honours course combines theoretical and practical education through lectures, seminars, projects, and placements designed to provide you with a well-rounded understanding of the relevant topics students graduate with experience and a portfolio of work in demand by employers across multiple industries.

Overview

Overview

Key Features

  • You will learn the core skills of  journalism – how to spot, write, produce and sell a story for news, magazine, television, radio and social media, alongside looking at media law, ethical issues and the role of journalism in today’s society – why it matters
  • A wide range of History modules in British, European and World History from the sixteenth through to the twenty-first centuries delivered by highly experienced, supportive and expert lecturers with international research profiles
  • The course is designed to enable you to acquire skills in research, analysis and communication – all of which are highly valued by employers
  • Students are taught by experienced, trained and practising lecturers and also benefit from an exciting programme of guest speakers from within the industry
  • Ready access to the nationally significant resources of Worcestershire County Archives Service, which is based in The Hive (the university library)
  • Opportunities to gain work experience, to study abroad for a semester and to gain excellent work placement opportunities, developed in collaboration with local organisations, including the BBC
  • Tailor your course to your individual needs with a joint honours degree
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Entry requirements

Entry requirements

104
UCAS tariff points

Entry Requirements

104 UCAS Tariff points.

The University’s standard entry requirements apply: 4 GCSEs (Grade C/4 or above) and a minimum of 2 A Levels (or equivalent Level 3 qualifications). Although A Level English is desirable, evidence of sound written skills through relevant subjects is acceptable. 

T Levels may be used to meet the entry tariff requirements for this course. Find out more about T levels as UCAS tariff points here.

Other information

If you have any questions about entry requirements, please contact the Admissions Office on 01905 855111 or email admissions@worc.ac.uk for advice.

Further information about the UCAS Tariff can be obtained from UCAS.

"Great lecturers who care and want to help as much as they can to help me achieve the best possible grades. Interesting new modules which I would not have considered taking prior to my undergraduate degree."

BA History student

Course content

Course content

Our courses are informed by research and current developments in the discipline and feedback from students, external examiners and employers. Modules do therefore change periodically in the interests of keeping the course relevant and reflecting best practice. The most up-to-date information will be available to you once you have accepted a place and registered for the course. If there are insufficient numbers of students interested in an optional module, this might not be offered, but we will advise you as soon as possible and help you choose an alternative. 

Year 1

Mandatory

  • Journalism Law and Ethics
  • Britain since the Reformation
  • Reconstructing the Past: Academic, Public and Popular History
  • Introduction to Digital Techniques
  • Introduction to Journalism 

Year 2

Mandatory

  • Journalism, Law, Ethics and Society

Optional

  • Magazine Journalism & Feature Writing
  • Sports Journalism
  • Reporting Politics
  • Developing Your Media Career
  • Broadcast & Social Media
  • Broadcast Journalism
  • Social Media for Journalists
  • Entertainment Journalism
  • Historical Research: Method and Practice
  • The American Century, 1917-2001
  • The German Empire, 1862-1918
  • History Work Experience Module
  • War and Peace: The Making of Modern Ireland
  • ‘A People’s War?’ Britain and the Second World War
  • Georgian Britain and the Atlantic World, 1760-1820
  • Heritage Tourism and Place Promotion
  • UGTU1001 Introduction to Tutoring
  • Option modules from the Centre for Academic English and Skills

Year 3

Options

  • Work Placement
  • Investigative Journalism and Research Skills
  • Advanced Digital Production
  • Final Project
  • Campaigning & Environmental Journalism
  • Advanced PR & Comms
  • Gender, Identity & Inclusivity
  • Podcasting and Live News Production
  • Dissertation
  • The Good War: The USA and World War Two
  • The Atlantic Slave Trade and Abolition
  • Nazi Germany
  • Research Experience Module
  • British Imperialism c. 1857-1972
  • Gender, Sexuality and Welfare. The Body in History.
  • Witchcraft and the Devil
  • Japan's World, 1854-1951
2 female students and 1 male student working at table

Joint Honours

Discover our full range of joint degrees and read about how your degree will be structured.

Find out more about studying a joint honours course

Meet the team

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Professor Darren Oldridge

Darren Oldridge is a specialist in sixteenth and seventeenth-century religious history. His interests include witchcraft and the Devil, the supernatural, and the religious context of the English Civil Wars. A recurring theme of his work is the rationality underpinning apparently strange beliefs: this is reflected, most recently, in the new edition of Strange Histories (Routledge: 2017). More broadly, he is interested in the relationship between poetry and film and the past.

At Worcester Darren teaches modules that reflect these interests, including The Early Modern World and Witchcraft and the Devil. At present he is editing the third edition of The Witchcraft Reader, to be published by Routledge in 2018.

Candid headshot of Suzanne Schwarz

Professor Suzanne Schwarz

Suzanne Schwarz’s teaching at the University of Worcester focuses on the transatlantic slave trade and West Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She also focuses on developing historical research skills for students through the study of regional and local history. She was the recipient of two student-led teaching awards in 2013 and 2014.

Professor Neil Fleming

Neil Fleming's research and teaching focusses on aspects of British, Irish and imperial history since the late nineteenth century.

Dr Wendy Toon

Wendy Toon is an historian of the United States of America, specialising in the twentieth century. She is currently writing Images of the Enemy: American Constructions of the Germans and Japanese in World War Two (Routledge, forthcoming 2020).

Wendy joined the University of Worcester in September 2002. She previously held positions at Staffordshire University and Keele University, and was a Royal Historical Society Fellow (Peter Marshall Fellowship) at the Institute of Historical Research.  

Dr Paddy McNally


Paddy McNally's teaching and research interests are focused on Irish history from 1690 until 1848, German history from 1870 to 1945, and the history of political thought. He is author of the book, Parties, Patriots and Undertakers. Parliamentary politics in early Hanoverian Ireland and numerous articles on eighteenth-century Irish history. He is currently writing From the Boyne to the Famine. A thematic history of Ireland, 1690-1848, to be published by Routledge. He teaches specialist modules on Irish history 1690-1848, German history 1870-1945, and Nationalism. He has successfully supervised PhD and MPhil students to completion and welcomes expressions of interest from prospective postgraduate researchers in most aspects of British and Irish history from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries.

Anna Muggeridge

Dr Anna Muggeridge

Dr Anna Muggeridge is a historian of modern Britain with a particular specialism in women’s and gender history. She researches histories of women’s political activism, with a particular focus on the local. Currently, she is researching a history of women in local government in interwar England and Wales, as well as working collaboratively with colleagues at a number of other institutions on projects related to women’s activism in the twentieth century.

Dr Elspeth King

Dr Elspeth King

Elspeth King joined the university in August 2022 after 8 years of being an Associate Lecturer. Her research and teaching interests are in twentieth-century British history, especially the First and Second World Wars and Women’s History.

Elspeth is also interested in social class and the impact this has on the lived experience of people in everyday life.

Teaching and assessment

Teaching and assessment

For more information about teaching, learning and assessment on this course, please see the single honours course pages for History BA (Hons) and Journalism BA (Hons)

History at Worcester is designed to enable you to study the types of history that appeal to you most. Informed by cutting-edge research on key questions of our time, it offers you the opportunity to study the political, cultural and social history of Britain, Europe and the wider world from the 16th to 20th centuries. The course begins with a broad introduction to many of today’s debates surrounding history and approaches to historical study. It ends with the opportunity for you to produce a major piece of work on a topic of your choice, supported by one-to-one supervision. History provides you with opportunities to benefit directly from your lecturers’ cutting-edge research and research interests – which include, amongst many others, the Devil in Tudor and Stuart England, US propaganda in the Second World War, appeasement, the transatlantic slave trade and the home front in World Wars 1 and 2.

Journalism is vocationally focused and aims to support you to acquire the knowledge and skills that will equip you to work in today’s multi-platform media environment. You are taught by experienced, trained, and still practising journalists in state-of-the-art broadcasting facilities, including radio studios linked to a newsroom, industry-standard TV studios, and new podcast studios. There are opportunities for work placements with local media organisations (including the BBC) and a host of guest lectures by high-profile visitors to the course. You are able to tailor your studies to focus on particular aspects of journalism – from sports to entertainment to environmental journalism – or to branch out into wider areas of media and communications. Your learning is hand-on, with an emphasis on supporting you to seek journalism and communications roles once you have graduated.

Studying History and Journalism in combination will be well worth considering if you enjoy the processes of research and communicating your research, if you are looking for a mix of academic and practical, hands-on learning, and if you are interested in the roles that historians, journalists and the media play in the formation of political understanding, social change and mass communication.

Programme specification

For comprehensive details on the aims and intended learning outcomes of the course, and the means by which these are achieved through learning, teaching and assessment, please download the latest History programme specification and Journalism programme specification documents.

Careers

Careers

History graduates from Worcester have progressed in recent years to take up work in a variety of career sectors, including teaching, accountancy, law, the media industries, local government, the police, retailing, administration, marketing, management and university lecturing and research. A growing number of our graduates progress to postgraduate research in history, both at the University of Worcester and at other universities. Thus, History remains an attractive and personally satisfying degree to study, with a strong track record of supporting graduate employability in a range of professional, managerial, administrative and media-related careers.

The Journalism aspect of the course will provide you with practical skills to work as a journalist or researcher, or in related communications jobs such as those in public relations. You will be well placed to progress to postgraduate study in journalism or in a wide range of other areas. Students have found employment in the following areas: broadcast and print journalism, radio presenting, both local and national, media research, event organising, media planning, television, theatre, marketing, public relations, social media management, campaigns, teaching, and further study.

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Careers and Employability

Our Graduates pursue exciting and diverse careers in a wide variety of employment sectors.

Find out how we can support you to achieve your potential
Costs

Fees and funding

Full-time tuition fees

UK and EU students

The standard fee for full-time home and EU undergraduate students enrolling on BA/BSc/LLB degrees and FdA/FdSc degrees in the 2024/25 academic year is £9,250 per year.

For more details, please visit our course fees page.

International students

The standard tuition fee for full-time international students enrolling on BA/BSc/LLB degrees and FdA/FdSc degrees in the 2024/25 academic year is £16,200 per year.

For more details, please visit our course fees page.

Part-time tuition fees

UK and EU students

The standard tuition fees for part-time UK and EU students enrolling on BA/BSc/LLB degrees and FdA/FdSc degrees in the academic year 2024/25 are £1,156 per 15-credit module, £1,542 per 20-credit module, £2,312 per 30-credit module, £3,083 per 40-credit module, £3,469 per 45-credit module and £4,625 per 60 credit module.

For more details, please visit our course fees page.

Additional costs

Every course has day-to-day costs for basic books, stationery, printing and photocopying. The amounts vary between courses.

If your course offers a placement opportunity, you may need to pay for an Enhanced Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check.

Accommodation

Finding the right accommodation is paramount to your university experience. Our halls of residence are home to friendly student communities, making them great places to live and study.

We have over 1,000 rooms across our range of student halls. With rooms to suit every budget and need, from our 'Chestnut Halls' at £131 per week to 'Oak Halls' at £221 per week (2024/25 prices).

For full details visit our accommodation page.

How to apply