Museum and Heritage Studies (MLitt) 2027 entry

Course information may change. Module information and course content, teaching and assessment may change each year and after you have accepted your offer to study at the University of St Andrews. We display the most up-to-date information possible, but this could be from a previous academic year. For the latest module information, see the module catalogue.

• Compulsory

  • Museum Practice: equips you with foundational skills required in a broad range of roles within the cultural sector. Taught by highly experienced practitioners from the University of St Andrews Museums Team, the Museum and Heritage Studies teaching team, and staff from across the University, it will introduce the basic tenets of collections management, display and interpretation, education, outreach and access and digital skills, and how these and other elements fit together to create a cohesive and engaging museum programme.
  • The Museum: Global Perspectives and Debates: provides you with a thorough grounding in museum studies through investigation into global literature and case studies. The themes examined will include, among others, an introduction to theories in museology, museum activism, museums and climate action, decolonisation, and the post-digital museum.

• Optional

  • Anthropology, Art and Perception 2: explores anthropology's potential for contributing to and critiquing image production in film, art and photography; develops new sensory approaches to observation and engagement; and asks what is entailed in perceiving the past.
  • Art History in the Studio: Process, Materials, Technique: Asks what the history of art might look like as a history of process. Explores methods and concepts such as reconstruction, translation, entanglement, improvisation, autoethnography, situated cognition, and material engagement theory.
  • Art and Technology: Consider a series of technologies and ask: how has this technology inflected how images are made and consumed, what subjects are represented, and even what constitutes an image at all?
  • Colonial Collections and Critical Displays: This module focuses on the management of colonial collections in museums and heritage organisations, studying innovative skills and methodologies for their critical display.
  • Community Heritage and Sustainability: Will interrogate the ways in which such organisations can promote a sense of place and belonging, act as catalysts for adaptation, and build capacity towards sustainable futures.
  • Ecole du Louvre Summer Study: Replaces AH5099 for those students in the History of Art, History of Photography, or Museum and Heritage Studies MLitt programme who have been selected for the exchange program with the Ecole du Louvre
  • Issues in Photographic Criticism: provides an introduction to key writings and debates in the history of photographic criticism from the 1830s to the present day.
  • Object Lessons in Photography: This module will explore, interpret and analyse photographic materials in the University of St Andrews Special Collections.
  • Participation and Co-production in Museums and Heritage: Participatory practice has become a critical aspect of museum and heritage work in attempts to go beyond a conventional focus on care for objects and sites.The module will explore international case studies, including ongoing practice-based research.
  • Representation and the Body: Examines representations of the body from the early modern period to the contemporary moment. Focuses on key episodes in the history of art in which representations of the body were consolidated, transformed, or contested.
  • Special Topic in Interdisciplinary Learning: allows you to advance your learning by undertaking a research project on an agreed topic and provides preparation for the end of degree project.
  • The 'New Vision' in Twentieth-Century European Photography: examines the formal features, social context and political import of photography in Europe known by the umbrella label 'New Vision'.
  • The Book as Object and Idea: Considers the book as cultural artefact, idea and symbol, as well as a source of information and a vehicle for conveying the messages contained in texts and images. The target period of the course is the late middle ages and early modern period.
  • The Digital Museum: Past, Present and Future: Critically analyses the adoption of digital technologies in cultural institutions and the impact of this upon their audiences.
  • The Documentary Impulse: Explores the complex relationship between photography and concepts of documentary and the document during the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first. Addresses a range of issue and practices in relation to key socio-political events and ideas.
  • Themes in Art History: This module introduces students to a selection of key issues, concepts, and writings in the field. It enables students to appreciate how art history constitutes itself as a discourse, via core case studies and themes.
  • Writing on the Visual: Examines verbal responses to the visual, from the origins of art criticism as a literary genre, to contemporary modes of art writing. Explores varieties of ekphrasis, including poetic responses to works of art, and works of art that incorporate text.

• Dissertation

  Student dissertations will be supervised by members of the teaching staff who will advise on the choice of subject and provide guidance throughout the research process. The completed dissertation of not more than 15,000 words must be submitted by a date specified in August.

  Alternatively, students may choose to complete a summer work-based placement or to participate in the Group Public Engagement Project modules.

  If students choose not to complete the dissertation, work-based placement or public engagement project summer requirement for the MLitt, there is an exit award available that allows suitably qualified candidates to receive a postgraduate diploma (PGDip). By choosing an exit award, you will finish your degree at the end of the second semester of study and receive a PGDip instead of an MLitt.