hi welcome everybody in digital form to the university of Birmingham I’m Dr Thomas brody
and I’m a lecturer in 20th century European history I mainly work on the history of Germany
and I’m also an admissions tutor for history and joint schools and I’m going to be talking
a little bit now about our programme in history and politics in particular and I hope that this
presentation is helpful for you guys okay so let's begin if you were to apply to the university of
Birmingham the offer you would receive would be individually tailored for you as a person it would
take account of your gcse results the subjects you're currently studying and other qualifications
your predicted grades as well as your references from school and your personal statement and it
would absolutely take into account your own individual circumstances your school
your household income as well as any caring responsibilities you may have we try and
approach this process in as humane and sensible away as possible and if you want to find out more
about what kind of offer you might receive from the university of Birmingham please feel free to
complete our offer calculator on the university's website and of course to attend our open days
so speak specifically about the kind of offer that you might receive for ba history and politics
the course has the ucas code lv21 and the typical offer and again I noted it
is tailored to your individual circumstances but the generic offer is aab or if you're doing an
international baccalaureate it's 665 the higher level subjects and 32 points overall okay but do
look at the offer calculator on our website to see how this pertains to your individual circumstances
so let's talk now though about Birmingham itself as a university and as a city now as I’m sure
many of you know the university of Birmingham is a campus university in the suburb of Edgbaston just
over a mile outside of the city centre and in many ways the campus is a kind of a small town in its
own right complete with cafes and restaurants as well as academic and sporting facilities
and we're very lucky on campus to have the barber institute of fine arts which is an
art gallery with a wonderful collection of 16th and 17th century European artworks
we have the lapworth museum of geology where you can see here in this like the rather wonderful
big al allosaurus my daughter is very fond of visiting a big al so if you're interested in
dinosaurs please do check that out as well as the Elgar concert hall as well so the campus
itself offers a tremendous amount of facilities and recreational opportunities and as mentioned
it is only just over a mile from Birmingham city centre and you can easily catch the train
directly into Birmingham in under 10 minutes from university train station and in Birmingham
itself you have a whole host of museums and art galleries such as the Birmingham museum
wonderful sort of classical music concert hall symphony hall as well as lots of music venues
theatres restaurants and bars so let's talk a little bit more now about the degree program
itself in history and politics and I think the first thing I really need to emphasize to you
is that you will work as students in these subjects with historians and political scientists
who are themselves leading researchers in their fields and deeply involved in the intellectual
and cultural life of this city the uk Europe and the wider world and our research very much shapes
and informs our teaching and that you thus gain access to it over the course of your degree and
we privilege overwhelmingly small group teaching in the course of the degree in groups of around
a dozen students as well as ample opportunities for one-on-one teaching for example when writing
a research dissertation that is something we place a tremendous amount of emphasis upon
and most importantly we like to think that we are an extremely approachable group of historians and
political scientists who get to know our students well over the course of their degree programs
and that we nurture their interests effectively and ps as I say here on the slide yeah nice
so let's turn firstly to the department of history there are over 35 full-time lecturers
working in the department covering a wide range of global regions from Britain and continental
Europe to the united states and other parts of the world beyond such as Latin America and south
Asia and we are also historians of all periods medieval early modern and modern from you know
the Anglo-Saxon past all the way to the late 20th and early 21st century present so I mean if you
look at some of these photographs on this slide of various colleagues in the department I mean you
can see for example there's one historian there of brazil one of the united states several historians
of Britain and Britain’s empire you gain a sense of the geographical range which we offer
and also I mean Birmingham is a really excellent centre of historical research
in the last national ref or research excellence framework exercise carried out in 2014
the university of Birmingham was judged to be the first in the uk with around 45 percent of
the department's research receiving the highest award of being world leading
so Birmingham is a major centre of historical research which indeed as I’ve noted will inform
the teaching which you receive now the department of political science and international relations
is also a very large team with over 50 full-time lecturers covering a vast range
also of different topics and geographies and they are also indeed very nice people
now when we're teaching this is an activity which we place a tremendous amount of emphasis upon
that your lecturers are passionate teachers and many of them have also received advanced teaching
qualifications via the higher education academy and many scholars here pride themselves not
only on innovative elements of their research but also of their pedagogy and in addition to
you know the support you receive on individual modules from your lecturers there is a wide range
sort of an ecology of support which the department and university offer to you throughout your degree
program each student has a personal academic tutor who acts as a point of personal and pastoral
support as well as intellectual encouragement and that tutor meets individually every term with each
student and their under their care and recently as well there's been a weekly group meeting
of that personal tutor with his or her duties introduced as well so you do have
a personal tutor who kind of accompanies you on your journey through the degree program
for history and politics as well there is a dedicated history and politics tutor spanning the
two departments who acts to sort of ensure that these degree programs work seamlessly and that
the history and politics departments communicate effectively with one another and there are also
very importantly well-being officers here in the school of history and cultures and
in other schools as well who are there to provide you with emotional support throughout your degree
in the event of personal problems such as illness or bereavement and they can also help
provide you with extensions and extenuating circumstances paperwork with regards to your
assessment even beyond this the university has an academic writing advisory service
it's here for humanity students based in the college of arts and law and that provides
dedicated support to help cultivate your academic writing skills in terms of styles structure and
argument there is also an academic skills centre to help you master you know particular skills
such as time management or referencing your essays and there is also a very advanced and
developed careers network here at the university which is available to you not only during but
also after your degrees to help you make the next step into working life after graduation
so I thought I’d now just give you a sense of the different degree options well the different
pathways through your degrees in the first year of history you study compulsory modules
practicing history a and practicing history b which really initiate you into the professional
practice of being a historian developing your skills of reading and note-taking essay writing as
well as your appreciation for different forms of historical writing such as global history cultural
history or intellectual history for example and beyond this you will also do various modules a
choice for example the option discovering the middle ages an introduction to medieval history
or an introduction to early modern history the making of the modern world from 1500 to 1800 and
you also have a choice on a course on modern history the making of the contemporary world
1800 to the present or the history of Africa and its diaspora so the logic of the first year is
that it initiates you very much into the skills of the historical profession as well as giving you a
broad overview of world history in politics you would do three compulsory modules understanding
politics an introduction to political theory and of course politics as a vocation
now the general trajectory after year one is that you get more and more chance to specialize
as your degree programs advance you can privilege either politics or history as well as specializing
even within those individual disciplines for example you could specialize in a given period
of history you know for example you might choose to specialize in medieval or the history of a
particular global region you know for we have students for example who become specialists in
American history and there is also an opportunity to do a year abroad between years two and three
of your degree and Birmingham has exchanges and partnerships with universities in many countries
around the world such as you know Canada the united states Australia and Germany to name but
a few and many of our students go and study at one of those universities between their second
and third years here at Birmingham so just to give you a sense of what this added choice looks like
for history in year two I mean you start to do more specialist options for example a course on we
see here gender and sexuality in the 20th century united states or of course for example on Europe
in the first world war or one on society in the Viking world you see in year two you really get
a lot of choice over the kinds of history which you get to spend time studying and learning about
and again in the second year of politics on the politics side of things
more choice comes to the fore history and politics students do study the following
courses analysing political worlds race empire and modern political theory and at least one option
and you gain a sense here on this slide of the range and breadth of those options available
everything from a course on elections and voting in Britain to a course on global
governance war and peace and theory and practice Islam and politics in Europe or
of course on introduction to u.s politics there is something for everybody in there I can assure you
and indeed then after year two you have the choice of doing that you're abroad if you so desire
and if your grades up until this point in the degree permits you to do so
now in the final year of a history and politics degree the options become so extensive in terms
of your own choice and control over what you study that it's difficult in many ways to do justice to
it in this one slide but you have the option if you so desire to do a special subject in history
and or instead of a full dissertation of twelve thousand words those options available to you and
some students instead choose to do a shorter six thousand word joint honours dissertation and you
also have the options of doing an autumn or spring advanced option you won't do all of these things
but you get to pick and choose the pathway which you find most compelling through this final year
of the degree so just again to give you a sense of the special subjects on the menu as it were
you see mine at the very bottom of this list the rise and fall of the third Reich
and again all periods and geographies covered from 1066 epic tales of saints swordsman and scribes
to a course on racism multiculturalism and immigration in 20th century Britain
of course on India and the British imagination there is something for everybody in there
and if we look at the typical final year options for politics again a tremendous range of choice
everything from gender and world politics through to challenges to liberal democracy in Europe
so what careers do our graduates go on to pursue after leaving Birmingham it's a huge range many of
the students whom I’ve taught over my years here have gone into a wide range of professions the law
civil service teaching accountancy management consultancy pr and journalism to name but a few
along with the many who go on to do further study both here and elsewhere in the form of m.a degrees
or PhDs and the Sunday times named Birmingham its university of the year for graduate employment in
2016. and some of our students indeed go on to do quite extraordinary and creative things I mean I
I’ll I flank two here Elizabeth Murray who is currently working as the curator of textiles
and fashion at the Victoria and albert museum in London she took a great interest in the history of
sort of fashion and clothing in the course of her degree and in many ways transitioned seamlessly
from that into her role at the vna and also Hannah witton who is an extremely successful youtuber
and author of two best-selling books so in many ways our people go on to do a very very
wide range of things and they find that the skills that they acquire and cultivate here
in their degrees in history in politics and indeed in other joint schools you know critical
reading of texts oral and written communication these are very very helpful skills to go into a
very wide range of careers so it remains to me to say thank you very much for listening
please feel free to email me at this email below t.o.brodie behind.ac.uk if you have any questions
and do also feel free to leave a question in the comments below this video they are being
monitored and we will get back to you so I hope this was helpful and thank you for listening
I’m Gabriella hart and I’m in year one and I’m studying history when I first came to campus
I just loved the whole feeling that I could see myself walking around and one of the main factors
was the library because then it's brand new and all the facilities and study space and obviously
as I do history it's important to to study there and it's a lot of independent research so I
thought that would be a key factor and then also the course side of it and I’ve got to pick modules
for my second year now ready so just the choice and the like extensive different courses that you
can do so I’ve been on lots of walks recently so we went to winterbourne and walked around there
and loved just chatting with my new flatmates and that kind of thing getting to know people which is
a good way especially with the walks and walking along the canal to then centre where you can do so
many different things we've been Brindley place I’ve been to restaurants I also like Digbeth
and I’ve been there recently and we went to a place called floodgate where you can do different
activities like batting in a cage and just different things that you can't do other places
and then the classic spoons I think and players that's a club and bar so those kind of things I
think I always knew that I wanted to live in a city and as it's not as big as London I thought
it would be the second sort of the best option for me transport is so easy and especially with them
Birmingham uni you've got the bus that can take you in for a pound which is great and
I’ve been using that and recently and then obviously the train
got the university train station so transport was a key thing for me and then shops as well I love
shopping so that's also a key thing so yeah and the restaurants as well obviously with history
is you are quite independent so I have my contact hours I learned what I need to do and then I’ll
study throughout the week and sort of plan my time at the beginning of the week what I
want to do make sure my deadlines and all of that kind of thing are met and then you sort
of just got to balance it I guess with things so I try and sort of make sure I balance that
with going out like on a Friday but maybe not every week and yes it's just balance really