Curious about studying MArtH Art History (integrated masters) including placement year - MA (Hons)at University of Essex? We've gathered all the key details—entry requirements, modules, fees, and more. Hear from real students by checking out reviews, or take the next step by booking an open day to explore it for yourself.
Master of Arts - MArts (Hons)
Colchester Campus
Full Time
Oct 2026
5 Year
At Essex, you will acquire a broad foundation in the history of visual culture, both by learning about canonical forms of art and architecture and by discovering what has been overlooked or marginalised, such as medical photography, tattoos or objects from political protests. You will also develop the skills you need to make exciting new connections between the forms of visual culture you study, developments in other disciplines, and broader social and political forces. On the four-year MArtH Version of this course (five years if taking a year abroad or placement year), you will gain solid knowledge of Art History and develop the key skills of the discipline during your first three years at Essex. In your final year, you’ll take MA-level modules, which will enable you to investigate more advanced topics, and write a draft journal article. You’ll cover a wide range of topics throughout the course including: - Digital Media - Curating - Museums - Heritage - Latin American Art - Contemporary Art - Art and Human Rights Our MA modules include: - Critique and Curating - Current Research in Art History - Curating Latin American Art - Curating Inside Out - Heritage and Human Rights One of the major reasons for choosing Essex is the quality of the education you will receive. We are ranked 6th among art history departments in the UK for research excellence (REF 2014, mainstream universities, THE 2014). You will be taught by our expert staff in your very first year, a rarity in the UK.
This module is intended as a skills-building course for first year art history students, to develop writing skills across a range of assessed and non-assessed writing types (essay, critical review, reading summary, label text, catalogue essay etc). The module will also present an introduction to research methods in art history, and a historical overview of art historical writing.
This module tackles some of the biggest questions surrounding the history of art. You will explore some key theoretical issues in the history of art, such as the nature of representation, by engaging critically with seminal texts and artworks. In this module, you will develop your analytical and interpretive skills, and leave with a solid foundation for the study of the history of art.
This introductory module asks you to consider how art historians look (and have looked) at art and visual culture across history. In so doing, it seeks to train you to see and think like an art historian.
This course introduces key academic, professional and personal skills to support a successful transition beyond undergraduate study. Students develop confidence in critical thinking, communication, teamwork and self reflection while exploring future study and career options.
How did our society decide what counts as ‘art’ and what is ‘culture’? Is there really such a thing as high vs low culture? What are the political stakes of these divisions? This module looks at the shift in ideas from ‘art history’ to visual and material cultural studies. This module will engage with these debates and teach you new methods for seeing, interpreting and understanding art, design, craft, performance, fashion, film and videogames. These new ways of seeing are often driven by new theoretical ideas , and allow us to look at culture to draw out new perspectives on social and political issues of activism and social change, sex, technology, police violence, migration, austerity and crisis, state surveillance, and our relation to animals and the environment.
This third art and ideas module deepens your existing thematic and historiographical knowledge building on Art and Ideas II. In this module, we will familiarise ourselves with some of the most influential and insightful theoretical approaches to art in the 20th and 21st Century.
In this module you will produce a capstone project, taking the form of either of an 8,000-word written dissertation, or a curatorial project or heritage project of equivalent scope. The finished capstone project should show an all-round grasp of your subject and the ability to present your material clearly, succinctly and in the most appropriate sequence. It should also demonstrate evidence of a serious engagement with your topic, a mastery of the information currently available, and the inclusion of your own reasoned, critical judgements. A supervisor will help guide you as you begin to develop a research question, start researching the topic and write the dissertation or develop the curating or heritage project. This is a capstone module, available to final-year students on Art History, Curating, or Heritage courses with permission only.
This is the final project module for students on the Integrated Masters in Art History. It consists of a mixture of skills workshops and individual supervisions in the summer term while students write their Final Project (a Draft Journal Article). It provides students with essential skills, such as research design and the development of a research question, researching art historical problems in the Library and with electronic resources, presenting research ideas (in writing and through presentations) and advanced writing skills.
Placement Year
4.3
