How and why have the dead been treated and commemorated so differently from prehistory through to the present day? Our MA in Death and Memory is a chronologically broad course that explores the complex history of death and memory, from the treatment of the body in the earliest hunter-gatherer societies to thinking about how people dealt with the dead in twentieth-century conflict. At the heart of the course, therefore, are the complex interactions between the living and the deceased seen in cemeteries, memorials and funerary cultures.

Our course is an exciting, cross-period, postgraduate degree with global application. It will allow you to examine and gain advanced expertise in the study of death, burial and commemoration in the human past, shedding light on the debates and concerns of our present day.

The course draws on our research expertise in archaeology and history but is unusually cross-disciplinary. You will explore debates that connect to research themes shared across the humanities and social sciences, including studies of ritual, the body, material culture, memory and mortality. Consequently, this degree will interest those with first degrees in archaeology or history, as well as those with backgrounds in other disciplines.