MA Space, Time and Culture

Introduction

The Master's degree in Space, Time and Culture provides students with the appropriate knowledge, high-level skills and competencies required of an advanced professionally trained researcher specialising in either cultural or historical geography. The course is taught by members of the Historical and Cultural Geography Research Group who are all active in international research in the areas of cultures of mobility, cultural and social theory, time geographies, geographies of place, landscape studies and interpretations of various media, particularly film. The course provides students with the broad knowledge and skills relating to cultural and historical geography, specifically in the following contemporary and historical areas: iconography and interpretation of the cultural landscape; cultural constructions of nature and environment; creative and imaginative aspects of geographical thought and practice; issues of mobility and marginality; geography, writing and knowledge; the relationship between space, place and cultural identity; timespace and historical practice; and spatial biographies and geographical historiography. These skills and competencies are provided through a mixture of broadly-based research training in the Arts and Humanities and subject-specific training in research skills and transferable skills associated with cultural or historical geography.

Space, Time and Culture is delivered through a coherent programme of inter-linked delivering, at foundational level, generic training in humanities based research methods, together with subject-specific training in the area of cultural or historical geography. Students on this course take a total of five modules that comprise the taught element (Part One) of the MA. This training equips students with the skills, techniques and knowledge required to engage in a sustained piece of independent work, the master's dissertation (weighted at 60 credits and comprising Part Two of the course). Of the 120 taught credits 60 are, therefore, devoted to broadly- based generic training. The remaining 60 credits deliver the subject specific training. Successful completion of the first semester results in the award of a University Certificate in Space, Time and Culture. Successful completion of the second semester results in the award of a University Diploma in Space, Time and Culture. The production of a dissertation in the third semester leads to the MA. degree in Space, Time and Culture.

Semester 1

Advanced research skills taught include techniques of research design, methods of reading cultural texts in all their forms and modes of collection and analysis relating specifically to qualitative data

Semester 2

In the second semester students the research skills training becomes more focussed through their specific and sustained application to current debates within cultural and historical geography. Themes addressed include - Theories of memory, space and time, visualities, cultures of nature and the environment as well as approaches to landscape.

Semester 3

Potential dissertation topics

Students are encouraged to devise their own original topics in conversation with supervisors. Previous dissertation titles include "Geographies of Camouflage", "Performative Spaces of Bike Trails", "Geographies of American Film", "Environmental Ethics", "Spaces of Museum Practice", "Cultures of Mobility".