Approaching the Past

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 4
• Convenor and tutor: Dr Carmen Mangion
• Assessment: a 1000-word workshop journal (25%) and 1500-word essay (75%)

Whatever degree you choose in history, classics or 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, your degree will equip you with the skills to identify, investigate and interpret the traces they left of themselves and their societies.

Approaching the Past helps you to take your first steps as a historian, classicist or archaeologist. You will have the opportunity to:

• work with original documents and objects and with specialists in our own and other fields
• locate information and show where you found it
• take in, process and use information - from lectures, readings and seminars - that will shape your understanding of the past.

This module 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 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 in your first year of study to develop friendships and to share ideas, research development and writing.

Indicative syllabus

Core skills:

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