• Offered for Year: 2026/27

• Module Leader(s): Ms Anne Redgate
• Lecturer: Dr Anton Caruana Galizia, Dr Adam Morton, Dr Kristin Hussey, Dr Martin Farr, Dr Simon Mills, Dr Nicola Clarke, Dr Fergus Campbell, Dr Shane McCorristine, Professor Susan-Mary Grant

• Owning School: History, Classics and Archaeology
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

History Lab I (and its semester two counterpart, History Lab II) is a historical survey taught through case studies. The goal is to teach – and learn – through meaningful microcosm, rather than attempt a whistle-stop tour of everything.

Across the two modules, each member of staff will give three interconnected lectures on a specific case-study from their field: the lecturer will identify and discuss a discrete moment/event/issue, with one lecture discussing its attendant historiography, another lecture featuring primary sources on the same, and a third lecture that features public or private representations of that event as a basis for methodological issues. The integration of these differing dimensions will showcase how historians think and work by highlighting examples of differing historical interpretations and ongoing negotiations with the past.

A key aim of the module is to support students in developing strategies for independent learning: specifically, how to get up to speed with unfamiliar topics quickly. The formative assessments will be geared towards a) summarizing the argument and methodology outlined in the lectures, and b) contextualising the events or people of the case studies in time and space.

Outline Of Syllabus

Topics covered will vary from year-to-year, but most members of History staff will contribute a block of three lectures every year, giving students chance to explore a wide range of different periods, places, and approaches. They will thus be encouraged to draw parallels and see interconnections cross-culturally and cross-culturally, in order to move away from thinking of history in narrowly national or regional terms, a practice which tends to prioritise western histories and/or the Global North.

In some years each or either of the two History Lab modules may concentrate on a particular broad theme, with case studies ordered chronologically throughout the semester. If so, then depending on what case studies are scheduled for inclusion in a given year, the themes may change, in order to maintain a clear and coherent ‘fit’ between topics and overall theme.

Themes may include, but are not limited to, one or more of the following:

•       conflict
•       cities
•       social change
•       radical ideas
•       memory
•       identity
•       minorities
•       labour
•       health

Case studies may include, but are not limited to, one or more of the following:

•       The ‘Martyrs’ of Cordoba, 850-859
•       Art, Architecture, and Identity in the Tenth Century: Aghtamar Church and the Ruined City of Ani
•       The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536-37
•       The 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland
•       The Russian Revolution, 1917
•       The Jarrow Crusade, 1936
•       Civil Rights demonstrations in Birmingham, AL, 1963
•       The Stolen Generation in Australia
•       Decolonization
•       Post-War Germany

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

LECTURES will enable students to gain a wide sense of historical argument and debate and how such debates operate, which also allows them to develop comparisons between different historiographical debates. INTERACTIVE LECTURES, if offered, will allow a Q and A session to develop this further. In addition, students are encouraged to use staff OFFICE HOURS (Feedback, Consultation and Guidance Hours) for Q and A.

MODULE TALK will introduce students to the module.

WORKSHOPS will help to prepare students for their assessments.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Exams

Formative Assessments

Formative Assessment is an assessment which develops your skills in being assessed, allows for you to receive feedback, and prepares you for being assessed. However, it does not count to your final mark.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

As formative assessment, students are encouraged to write a 'practice' exam answer of 750 words each week and to select one as the formative assessment exercise to bring to Workshop 1 where feedback will be provided. A bibliography may be included in order to get feedback about choice and use of readings.


An exam answer requires a short piece of academic writing in response to a question. It requires students to express an opinion and provide evidence as to why they are taking that particular stance. For each weekly case study, students are provided with two practice exam questions which relate to the topic and sources at hand.

Exams test students' independent though guided learning and their ability to work unaided, their acquisition of a clear general knowledge of the subject plus their ability to think and analyse a problem quickly, to select from and to apply both the general knowledge and detailed knowledge of aspects of the subject to new questions, their problem-solving skills, their adaptability, and their ability to write clearly and concisely.

Study-abroad, non-Erasmus exchange and Loyola students spending semester 1 only are required to finish their assessment while in Newcastle. Where an exam is present, an alternative form of assessment will be set and where coursework is present, an alternative deadline will be set. Details of the alternative assessment will be provided by the module leader.

Reading Lists

• HIS1102's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• HIS1102's Timetable