BA (Hons)
Classical Studies with Ancient History BA (Hons)
Classical Studies

Module Overview

This module focuses on the archaeology, visual and material culture, and history of pre-Roman, Roman, through to early medieval Lincoln. Students will explore the settlement, from pre-Roman, through the Roman legionary fortress, urban veteran colony, to the sub-Roman and early Medieval settlement, developing an understanding of the role and character of Lincoln within the broader context of change in Britain as a whole. By exploring the city’s evidence and using it to form interpretations on key themes, students will gain a detailed understanding of theoretical paradigms for social change, the nature of ‘conquest’ and military settlement, the origins and functions of cities, reasons for urban change and decline, and the significance of memory and place in the post-Roman features.

Module Overview

This module provides a survey of the history and archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East between the reign of Alexander the Great and the death of Cleopatra VII after the Roman victory at the Battle of Actium in 30 BC. Students will have the opportunity to explore the political histories, power structures, cultural developments, economic processes and shifting ideologies associated with the major Hellenistic kingdoms and ending with the Roman conquest of the eastern Mediterranean region. Teaching also considers how the Hellenistic period was a time of innovation, cultural connectivity, even globalisation, laying the foundations of a Hellenized world of city-states which endured into and defined the Roman construction of a world empire in its aftermath.

Module Overview

This module explores a key resource for understanding the thoughts, feelings, and conversations of ancient people. Graffiti, and other informal epigraphic marks, in Greek and Latin (and other languages) were marked onto fixed and portable surfaces throughout the ancient world, and their informal and non-official nature offers a unique window into the lives and worldviews of people often invisible or marginal in the standard documentary, literary, and material sources.

Module Overview

This module explores major thematic concerns across Greek and Latin literary traditions and/or a range of genres, including epic, tragedy, lyric, historiography, and philosophical writing. Rather than focusing on individual authors or texts in isolation, the module adopts a thematic and comparative approach, examining how ideas such as power, identity, gender, violence, exile, memory, love, and the human relationship with the divine are developed, contested, and reimagined across time and literary form.

Module Overview

This module gives students the opportunity to build and demonstrate problem-solving skills in the context of applied philosophy. Students will be introduced to the interdisciplinary methods of applied ethics and examine together a series of selected applied ethics case studies, drawn from a variety of different areas including health care, climate justice, AI, beginning and end of life. Students will then work on an individual project which they will present in poster form at the end of the module. The module will give students a thorough grounding in applied ethics and enable them to evidence the key employability skill of problem-solving in the context of applied philosophy.

Module Overview

This module examines how and why the culture of Britain changed in the period of increasing contact with, and eventual incorporation into, the Roman Empire. Examining the key material, behavioural, ideological and structural changes to society in the period c. 100 BC to AD 450, it will question to what degree each aspect was a wholesale incorporation of ‘foreign’ ideas, technologies and goods, a local interpretation and adoption of these importations into an existing social system, or a local creation that was distinctly Romano-British, if often termed ‘Roman’.

Module Overview

This module provides an introduction to Indian philosophy and gives students the opportunity to study some of the classic texts of Indian philosophy in detail. While texts will be studied in English translation students can also gain a familiarity with the elements of classical Indian (principally Sanskrit) philosophical vocabulary. Topics will be drawn from both the astika (orthodox Hindu) schools such as Naya-Vaisheshika and Samkhya-Yoga and nastika schools such as Jainism and Buddhism, and will cover areas such as logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and linguistics. The focus of the module will be philosophical, not interpretive or historical. Students will be expected assess the credibility of the positions and arguments advanced by classical Indian thinkers and to develop their own views in dialogue with them.

Module Overview

This module provides an interdisciplinary introduction to Classical reception, the study of how Greek and Latin languages and literature as well as Greek and Roman art and architecture have been interpreted, reinterpreted, and represented in different historical and cultural contexts. Students will look at how later cultures made use of the classical past and how they themselves have changed and shaped the way in which the ancient world is understood both in academia and in popular culture.

Module Overview

Clio, the muse of History, had many and diverse children. This module examines both the birth and development of historiography in Ancient Greek Literature. Students will use a wide range of primary sources together with secondary sources and engage with diverse types of writing, ranging from military historians to ethnographers, biographers, geographers, and female historians.

Module Overview

This module looks to provide an introduction to the preventive conservation skills needed to set out as a practicing conservator. Students have the chance to develop an understanding of practical preventive conservation and collections management procedures, and can gain experience in environmental monitoring and surveying. Topics such as integrated pest management and emergency planning are also discussed.

Module Overview

Beginning with the Royal Historical Society’s “Race, Ethnicity and Equality Report” (published in 2018), which raises urgent questions on the diversity of staff, students and curricula at History departments in UK universities, the module analyses live debates on “Decolonising the Curriculum” in higher education. We critique how histories of Empire, colonialism and slavery have been taught in Anglo-American settings, and introduce postcolonial analysis on archives, as well as the “Global South” and “indigenous knowledge” that have often been marginalised in Eurocentric historiographies.

Turning towards the University as a key apparatus of power in the contemporary world, the module then reveals the complex legacies of slavery in the making of a number of UK and US institutions including Liverpool, Bristol, Oxford (#RhodesMustFall), SOAS, University of Virginia and others. Introducing the new field of “Critical University Studies” (CUS), students will learn about the emergence of universities in former colonies including India and South Africa, as well as the phenomenon of “transnational education” that entails the establishment, by prestigious European and American institutions, of satellite campuses around the world. The module then unpacks public understandings of colonial history via recent scholarship on nationalism, patriotism, museums and memories, and ends with a hopeful reflection on pedagogies that will be more inclusive and intersectional in terms of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. This module will be particularly suited to students who intend to develop careers in education.

Module Overview

This module will explore the significance of time (the past, present, and future), belief, and power in landscapes of early historical Britain (c. 200 BC to c. AD 800). Landscape was the largest and most visible medium that people could use to communicate who they were and to negotiate their place in the world.

Module Overview

The cultural heritage sector increasingly offers opportunities for the application of digital technologies as communication, research and recording tools. This module enables students to become familiar with some of these advanced recording techniques for the study and recording of objects.

Module Overview

This module aims to provide an introduction to the basics of Greek for students with little to no prior experience of the language. Students can gain the ability to translate and interpret sentences and short passages in prose and verse up to intermediate difficulty. This can aid sensitive reading of primary sources from the Classical world in translation, as well as in the original at higher levels of study.

Module Overview

This module aims to provide a continued introduction to the basics of Greek for students with little to no prior experience of the language. Students can refine their ability to translate and interpret sentences and short to medium-length passages in prose and verse up to advanced difficulty. This helps develop a foundation for sensitive reading of primary sources from the Classical world in translation, as well as in the original at higher levels of study.

Module Overview

This module explores fundamental questions about humanity's relationship with the natural world through the lens of philosophical inquiry. Drawing on both classical and contemporary thinkers, we examine key debates in environmental ethics, from the intrinsic value of nature to questions of ecological justice and sustainability. Students will critically assess different philosophical approaches to pressing environmental challenges, including climate change and biodiversity loss, while developing sophisticated arguments about environmental responsibility and stewardship. The module combines careful philosophical analysis with practical application, making it relevant for students interested in environmental issues, public policy, or fundamental questions about human-nature relationships. Through thoughtful discussion and analysis, students will be able to develop valuable critical thinking skills while engaging with one of the most significant intellectual challenges of our time.

Module Overview

The aim of this module is to give students a thorough understanding of two intimately related philosophical traditions that came to prominence in the 19th and 20th centuries: existentialism and phenomenology. Each attempts to address the nature and meaning of human existence from the perspective of individual, first-person experience, focusing in particular on fundamental questions of being, meaning, death, nihilism, freedom, responsibility, value, human relations, and religious faith.

The module will examine selected existential themes through the writings of thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, De Beauvoir, and Camus. Since existentialism is as much a artistic phenomenon as a philosophical one, students will also be given the opportunity to explore existentialist ideas in the works of various literary figures, such as Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and Milan Kundera.

Module Overview

Explore a wide range of cutting-edge digital approaches to studying the past through a significant and growing area of research, the digital humanities. By studying this module, you can focus on developing the practical skills, techniques, and methodologies that can play a vital role in your future studies and career.

The module provides opportunities to enhance, analyse, and interpret humanistic endeavours through approaches such as social network analysis, digital mapping, data visualisation, and textual analysis. You can also explore the impact and potential of artificial intelligence on the study of humanities in the digital worlds.

Module Overview

This student-led module allows students the opportunity to design a course of study equivalent to a 15-credit module. In collaboration with a lecturer in the School of History and Heritage, students can choose A. to produce an extended essay on a Classical Studies topic not specifically covered by current core or optional modules, B. gain a new skill, or C. undertake a creative project. Examples of A. might include ancient myth, epigrams, or drama; examples of B. might include digital drawing or epigraphic skills; examples of C. might include designing an exhibition.

Module Overview

This student-led module allows students the opportunity to design a course of study equivalent to a 15-credit module. In collaboration with a lecturer in the School of History and Heritage, students can choose A. to produce an extended essay on a Classical Studies topic not specifically covered by current core or optional modules, B. gain a new skill, or C. undertake a creative project. Examples of A. might include ancient myth, epigrams, or drama; examples of B. might include digital drawing or epigraphic skills; examples of C. might include designing an exhibition.

Module Overview

King Alfred, Viking invasions, the Norman Conquest, Domesday Book, wars of succession spilling over the Channel into Normandy: some of the most emblematic and controversial moments and monuments of English history date to the period students will encounter in this module. But did this period really see the birth of England? How was the modest kingdom of Wessex of the late ninth century transformed in the following two centuries into a state that some historians believe to have been unusually precocious, innovative and efficient in its governing structures? What role did other parties and peoples from the British Isles and further afield play in these developments? And after the extraordinary events of 1066 – which saw England conquered by the Normans – how do we explain a subsequent political crisis so devastating that the survival of the kingdom itself was in doubt by the middle of the twelfth century?

These questions lie at the heart of this module, which will ask students to examine primary sources and engage in longstanding historiographical debates on a weekly basis. Special attention will be paid to showing students how historians use source materials of varying kinds from the Middle Ages to develop, nuance or challenge rival interpretations of this formative period in the early English, Anglo-Scandinavian, and Anglo-Norman worlds; in the process, students will increase their knowledge, broaden their skills, and begin to think about the exciting challenges historians face when trying to understand the many complex and contested aspects of England’s medieval past.

This module will show students that the origins of the country we now know as England merit close and detailed examination. For while historians argue about whether England existed in a recognisable form in 871 when King Alfred became king of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex, that England not only existed by the middle of the twelfth century but was one of the most powerful kingdoms in Europe, its territorial influence spreading far beyond the Channel, is a matter of consensus. How and when did an idea of England take shape and what were the formative historical processes that made that idea reality? An exploration of these ideas underpins this module, which will introduce students to a range of source materials, both written and archaeological, ranging from coins to chronicles, and castles to collections of documents known as cartularies.

Accordingly, this module will ask students to consider important questions about the origins of government, the beginnings of legal and administrative structures that in some sense persist to this day, and the distribution of the economic resources that made kingship and feudal society possible. By extension, this module will offer students a chance to acquaint themselves with the skills and techniques that allow historians to handle the complex and wide-ranging sources we rely upon to study the period in question, in the process demystifying the study of the Middle Ages and providing a solid basis for further study of medieval societies.

Module Overview

The University has a strong commitment to providing academic programmes with high vocational relevance, which is maintained through working links with local, national and international organisations and, in particular, through student work placements.

The Placement Year aims to give students a continuous experience of full-time work within an organisation. It should be a three-way co-operative activity between employer, student and University from which all parties benefit. It is more than simply obtaining work during a gap in study – work placements should enable students to experience at first hand the daily workings of an organisation while setting that experience in the broader context of their studies.

The Placement Year constitutes a work placement during an academic year, funded by full-time paid employment* taking place between Level 2 and Level 3. The minimum duration of placement is 39 weeks.

Students wishing to undertake the work placement year must successfully complete the Level 2 of their programme.

All students on the Placement Year as part of their full-time undergraduate study will remain enrolled with the University during the period of placement and receive support. Students originally enrolled on 3-year programmes wishing to transfer to the 4-year programme must do so before the start of their placement, should gain the consent of their funders, where appropriate, and advise the University of their intention before the September enrolment.

Module Overview

This module explores ancient inscriptions as evidence for understanding society and culture by considering them as both texts as well as meaningful objects with archaeological contexts and material characteristics. Students will gain skills in finding and using epigraphic evidence to address thematic and topical questions about the ancient world. From stamps on ceramics to monumental stone inscriptions, the module will review the variety of evidence across a wide geographical area and chronological range. Students will become proficient in using relevant online databases and gain knowledge of the methods used for recording and studying inscriptions.

Module Overview

This module aims to provide a continued introduction to the basics of Latin for students with little to no prior experience of the language. Students can refine their ability to translate and interpret sentences and short to medium-length passages in prose and verse up to advanced difficulty. This can aid sensitive reading of primary sources from the Classical world in translation, as well as in the original at higher levels of study.

Module Overview

This module encourages students to connect making with how we understand and interpret historical objects. Through physically engaging with materials and craft processes, students learn experientially and gain insights into how material properties and making processes provide evidence for the past.

Module Overview

This module examines key British medieval texts, primarily in Middle English, from the High and Late Middle Ages (that is, from approximately the twelfth century to fifteenth century). It explores the breadth of literary activity in the period through a variety of genres--such as debate poetry, ethnographies, beast fables, romance, dream visions, satire, devotional and mystical writings, and mystery plays--and the evolution of a new form of English (the precursor of modern English), revealing that the medieval period is, in truth, a far cry from the misnomer by which it is often identified, the ‘dark ages’.

Module Overview

How can history and heritage be more inclusive of LGBTIQ+ lives and experiences? And how can queer perspectives help us to better understand the complexities of the past? This module responds to these questions by examining queer histories from the Ancient World to the present day. Taking a global view, the module investigates how concepts such as sex, sexuality, gender, the body, friendship and family have been organised in diverse ways across different times and places. In addition to considering how particular sexual and gender identities have emerged, the module also engages with ideas of queer history as a method for historical enquiry: one that is sceptical about binary analyses and linear narratives of progress.

Module Overview

The module will provide an introduction to the practical techniques of reading medieval documents, including the use of standard abbreviation forms in documents, the use of standard phrasing in administrative documents, and the development of this practice in large administrations (including royal and ecclesiastical chanceries). It will also introduce students to standard practice in document description of literary manuscrips as well as documentary sources and to the development of both literary and administrative hands in this period.

Module Overview

Students studying Renaissance Literature have the opportunity to look in detail at a range of texts from the late Elizabethan period to the mid-1630s, including work by Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson and Mary Wroth. They also have the chance to explore the historical and cultural contexts in which these texts were produced, and the effects that they had on the politics and culture of the British Isles in the period. Lectures aim to examine post-Reformation England and late humanism, patronage, gender relations, early modern literary theory, education and philosophy.

Module Overview

This module explores the Roman world beyond the Italian peninsula, examining changes in societies in Europe, the Near East, and North Africa, from the Iron Age through to the post-Roman world. It focuses on the diversity of evidence for what it meant to ‘be(come) Roman’ in the provinces of the Roman Empire, with a focus on local people and agency.

Module Overview

Classical Studies students have the opportunity to spend a term studying at one of the University’s partner institutions in North America or Europe where they undertake a course load of equivalent standard to that of the programme at Lincoln.

Studying abroad offers unique opportunities for personal development. It offers enhanced sporting, cultural, and other activities to enhance your overall profile, alongside experience of adapting to and working effectively within a different academic culture.

Students must obtain a 2:1 or higher at Level 1 in order to be considered for participation in the exchange. Students must complete a 500-word essay explaining why they wish to participate and may be required to attend an interview. A limited number of places will be available each year, and participation is at the discretion of the module coordinator and the Programme Leader.

Module Overview

Teaching History deepens students' understanding of the practice of teaching history in the classroom. The module encourages students, especially but not exclusively those who may be considering a career in education (or related industries), to think more deeply about pedagogic theory and teaching practice. Students will be given the opportunity to gain some practical experience in instructing their peers and online audiences. There will be a strong focus on reflecting on prior learning experiences and the module will begin by providing students with an overview of the history of history teaching. History teaching will be examined at primary and secondary level, and in other educational contexts.

Module Overview

This module examines Arthurian narratives, myths, and traditions within a variety of contexts and media, and traces a variety of themes associated with Arthur and his court, including history and national identity; violence; kingship and rule; loyalty and betrayal; and love, sex, and gender roles.

Students will be expected to assess the importance of a myth that spans more than a millennium and address how medieval texts made meaning within their specific socio-cultural situations, as well as how later periods make meaning through their deployment of the medieval in new contexts.

Module Overview

Language enables us to communicate about ourselves and the world around us. However, it is not clear how language achieves this nor is it clear what influence language has on these activities. Therefore, in this module we will examine language itself. We will try to clarify its nature and how it works.

Module Overview

This module explores the social, political and cultural realities shaped and framed by holy wars during the Middle Ages, with a primary focus on the Mediterranean (ca. 600-1200). We will explore and question the concept of holy wars from both Christian and Muslim perspectives, considering also the Byzantine responses to Jihad. Among the different locations under consideration in this module and linked to the framework of Crusades, we will focus on two zones of encounters and conflicts between Islam and Christianity: the Iberian Peninsula and the South of Italy. Beyond this, we will explore the eastern shores of the Mediterranean by focusing on the struggle for the dominion of the holy city of Jerusalem.

This module will help students develop a broad set of critical and analytical skills, while engaging with a variety of textual, visual and material sources. Students will gain an understanding of how the interplay of social, religious, political and cultural phenomena contributed to shaping a complex world – that of the crusades – which was more diverse and multilayered than some later historiographical representations might suggest.

Module Overview

This module introduces students to the origins and development of theatrical traditions in ancient Greece and Rome. The module explores key dramatic genres (tragedy, comedy, and satyr play) through close readings of representative works by authors such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plautus, and Terence. Students will examine drama as a literary, performative, and social practice, considering its religious, political, and cultural contexts. Particular attention is paid to themes such as myth, power, gender, citizenship, and the relationship between individual and community.

Module Overview

This module introduces students to the lives and experiences of women in the ancient and medieval worlds. By engaging with a wide range of material, visual, and written evidence, including poetry and epic, portraiture, inscriptions, legal texts, civic and domestic architecture, and human burial, students will investigate both the real historical circumstances of women’s lives and the ways in which they were constructed, represented, and perceived.

Module Overview

This module concentrates on the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, with a particular emphasis on The Canterbury Tales, perhaps Chaucer’s most famous work. Students will have the opportunity to examine the General Prologue and a variety of tales in relation to their historical context and literary antecedents, and, throughout, specific attention will be given to questions of genre (ranging from fable and epic to satire and romance), literary authority, narrative construction, and medieval aesthetics.

Module Overview

This module explores a key resource for understanding the thoughts, feelings and conversations of ancient people. Graffiti in Greek and Latin (and other languages) were marked onto fixed and portable surfaces throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, and their informal and non-official nature offers a unique window into the lives and worldviews of people often invisible or marginal in standard documentary, literary and material sources

Module Overview

This module will give students an opportunity to engage in close philosophical study of texts by the most influential ancient philosophers. Texts will be studied in English translation. They will include works by Plato and Aristotle, as well as by less familiar philosophers of the ancient world (c. 500 BC-500 AD Greece and Rome). The focus of the module will be philosophical, not interpretive or historical: students will be expected assess the credibility of the positions and arguments advanced by Plato, Aristotle and others and to develop their own views in dialogue with these thinkers.

Module Overview

This module explores major thematic concerns across Greek and Latin literary traditions and/or a range of genres, including epic, tragedy, lyric, historiography, and philosophical writing. Rather than focusing on individual authors or texts in isolation, the module adopts a thematic and comparative approach, examining how ideas such as power, identity, gender, violence, exile, memory, love, and the human relationship with the divine are developed, contested, and reimagined across time and literary form.

Module Overview

This module gives students the opportunity to build and demonstrate problem-solving skills in the context of applied philosophy. Students will be introduced to the interdisciplinary methods of applied ethics and examine together a series of selected applied ethics case studies, drawn from a variety of different areas including health care, climate justice, AI, beginning and end of life. Students will then work on an individual project which they will present in poster form at the end of the module. The module will give students a thorough grounding in applied ethics and enable them to evidence the key employability skill of problem-solving in the context of applied philosophy.

Module Overview

This module examines how and why the culture of Britain changed in the period of increasing contact with, and eventual incorporation into, the Roman Empire. Examining the key material, behavioural, ideological and structural changes to society in the period c. 100 BC to AD 450, it will question to what degree each aspect was a wholesale incorporation of ‘foreign’ ideas, technologies and goods, a local interpretation and adoption of these importations into an existing social system, or a local creation that was distinctly Romano-British, if often termed ‘Roman’.

Module Overview

This module examines both the birth and development of the concept of chivalry in the Middle Ages. Students can use a wide range of primary sources, as well as medieval and contemporary historiography, to explore how the role, image and function of medieval knights evolved over time.

Module Overview

The module will give students experience of volunteering (e.g. teaching students Latin or Greek, volunteering for an archaeological project, etc.) and/or of relevant training (e.g. curatorial, archaeological), and/or of work (e.g. an internship in a museum). It is expected that students will define, plan and undertake a specific project, which must be approved by the Module Coordinator.

Module Overview

This module provides an introduction to Indian philosophy and gives students the opportunity to study some of the classic texts of Indian philosophy in detail. While texts will be studied in English translation students will also gain a familiarity with the elements of classical Indian (principally Sanskrit) philosophical vocabulary. Topics will be drawn from both the astika (orthodox Hindu) schools such as Naya-Vaisheshika and Samkhya-Yoga and nastika schools such as Jainism and Buddhism, and will cover areas such as logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and linguistics.

Module Overview

This module provides an interdisciplinary introduction to Classical reception, the study of how Greek and Latin languages and literature as well as Greek and Roman art and architecture have been interpreted, reinterpreted, and represented in different historical and cultural contexts. Students will look at how later cultures made use of the classical past and how they themselves have changed and shaped the way in which the ancient world is understood both in academia and in popular culture.

Module Overview

Clio, the muse of History, had many and diverse children. This module examines both the birth and development of historiography in Ancient Greek Literature. Students will use a wide range of primary sources together with secondary sources and engage with diverse types of writing, ranging from military historians to ethnographers, biographers, geographers, and female historians.

Module Overview

This module will enable students to engage in the research and development of displays through the process of curating an exhibition for the museum or heritage sector. Students will select objects and structure this selection through an appropriate narrative. They will propose modes and examples of interpretation such as gallery text, audio or visual aids. The emphasis will be on developing knowledge and understanding of the role and responsibilities of the curator, and the project will enable students to evidence a focused and critically rigorous curatorial rationale.

Module Overview

This module will explore the significance of time (the past, present, and future), belief, and power in landscapes of early historical Britain (c. 200 BC to c. AD 800). Landscape was the largest and most visible medium that people could use to communicate who they were and to negotiate their place in the world.

Module Overview

This module introduces students to the use of digital technologies in the documentation, analysis, and communication of cultural heritage. Through both theoretical exploration and practical application, students will develop the skills to evaluate and employ advanced digital recording techniques in the study and interpretation of heritage objects and sites.

Module Overview

This module aims to provide an introduction to the basics of Greek for students with little to no prior experience of the language. Students can gain the ability to translate and interpret sentences and short passages in prose and verse up to intermediate difficulty. This can aid sensitive reading of primary sources from the Classical world in translation, as well as in the original at higher levels of study.

Module Overview

This module aims to provide a continued introduction to the basics of Greek for students with little to no prior experience of the language. Students can refine their ability to translate and interpret sentences and short to medium-length passages in prose and verse up to advanced difficulty. This helps develop a foundation for sensitive reading of primary sources from the Classical world in translation, as well as in the original at higher levels of study.

Module Overview

This module explores fundamental questions about humanity's relationship with the natural world through the lens of philosophical inquiry. Drawing on both classical and contemporary thinkers, we examine key debates in environmental ethics, from the intrinsic value of nature to questions of ecological justice and sustainability. Students will critically assess different philosophical approaches to pressing environmental challenges, including climate change and biodiversity loss, while developing sophisticated arguments about environmental responsibility and stewardship. The module combines careful philosophical analysis with practical application, making it relevant for students interested in environmental issues, public policy, or fundamental questions about human-nature relationships. Through thoughtful discussion and analysis, students will be able to develop valuable critical thinking skills while engaging with one of the most significant intellectual challenges of our time.

Module Overview

The aim of this module is to give students a thorough understanding of two intimately related philosophical traditions that came to prominence in the 19th and 20th centuries: existentialism and phenomenology. Each attempts to address the nature and meaning of human existence from the perspective of individual, first-person experience, focusing in particular on fundamental questions of being, meaning, death, nihilism, freedom, responsibility, value, human relations, and religious faith. The module will examine selected existential themes through the writings of thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, De Beauvoir, and Camus. Since existentialism is as much a artistic phenomenon as a philosophical one, students will also be given the opportunity to explore existentialist ideas in the works of various literary figures, such as Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and Milan Kundera.

Module Overview

This module will explore the development, decline and revival of stained glass from the early middle ages to the mid twentieth century. The focus will be on British stained glass with particular reference to windows that students can visit in person, particularly in Lincoln Cathedral and the parish churches of the region. Students will learn to analyse windows through a number of methodological frameworks in particular: production (design and manufacture), consumption (patronage, iconography and meaning) and aesthetics (style, drawing, manipulation of light).

Module Overview

By the late twelfth century, England’s rulers – the Angevin kings - were among the wealthiest and most powerful in Western Europe. At the time of his accession, King Richard the Lionheart ruled over a vast collection of territories (later known as the Angevin Empire), which stretched from the borders with Scotland in the North to the Pyrenees in the South. Yet, at the time of his brother King John’s death in 1216, most Angevin possessions on the continent had been lost and baronial rebels had overrun more than half of England. Using medieval records and chronicles in English translation, this module explores the dramatic reigns of King Richard and King John, and their reputations as rulers, asking whether the former really was a legend in his own lifetime, and whether the latter deserves to be remembered as one of our most disastrous medieval monarchs. Together we will consider King Richard’s participation in the Third Crusade, the impact of his absence on his English subjects, and his struggle to retain Angevin territories on the Continent. We will also analyse the loss of Normandy under King John, John’s violent quarrel with Pope Innocent III over the appointment of Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, the growth of opposition to John in England, the birth of Magna Carta, and the outcome of the civil war that was still raging on John’s death (including the Battle of Lincoln of 1217).

Module Overview

This module explores ancient inscriptions as evidence for understanding society and culture by considering them as both texts as well as meaningful objects with archaeological contexts and material characteristics. Students will gain skills in finding and using epigraphic evidence to address thematic and topical questions about the ancient world. From stamps on ceramics to monumental stone inscriptions, the module will review the variety of evidence across a wide geographical area and chronological range. Students will become proficient in using relevant online databases and gain knowledge of the methods used for recording and studying inscriptions.

Module Overview

This module aims to consolidate students' knowledge of and comfort with the principles of the Greek language through sustained reading of substantial extracts from a variety of prose authors. Classes will be structured around guided translation and interpretation of set texts in Attic dialect by Xenophon, Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle. Commentary focuses on points of grammar, syntax and vocabulary, as well as historical context and significance.

Module Overview

This module aims to consolidate students' knowledge of and comfort with the principles of the Greek language through sustained reading of substantial extracts from a variety of verse authors. Classes will be structured around guided translation and interpretation of select set texts in Attic dialect by Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, and in Ionic dialect by Homer. Commentary focuses on points of grammar, syntax and vocabulary, as well as historical context and significance. Students can also acquire a familiarity with metre and scansion in Greek poetry.

Module Overview

This module aims to provide a continued introduction to the basics of Latin for students with little to no prior experience of the language. Students can refine their ability to translate and interpret sentences and short to medium-length passages in prose and verse up to advanced difficulty. This can aid sensitive reading of primary sources from the Classical world in translation, as well as in the original at higher levels of study.

Module Overview

This module aims to refine and extend students' mastery of the Latin language through focused reading of unadapted extracts from prose authors and poets. Classes will be structured around guided translation and interpretation of set passages, while commentary will encompass points of grammar, syntax and vocabulary; peculiarities of authorial style in the context of other major writers; historical situation and significance; and major studies of the author and text.

Module Overview

This module will investigate the history of imperial Britain through material culture. The objects of study will range from trophies looted in battle and a drum transported with enslaved Africans to Virginia, to African sculpture depicting Europeans. Historians increasingly recognise the fresh insights that objects offer to major themes in imperial history such as gender, race and class. This module responds to these new academic developments and will use objects and their biographies to study key phases and themes in the history of the British Empire. Tracing the long history of such objects can enable us to explore how objects change meanings as they move through various colonial and post-colonial contexts.

Module Overview

How can history and heritage be more inclusive of LGBTIQ+ lives and experiences? And how can queer perspectives help us to better understand the complexities of the past? This module responds to these questions by examining queer histories from the Ancient World to the present day. Taking a global view, the module investigates how concepts such as sex, sexuality, gender, the body, friendship, and family have been organised in diverse ways across different times and places. In addition to considering how particular sexual and gender identities have emerged, the module also engages with ideas of queer history as a method for historical enquiry: one that is sceptical about binary analyses and linear narratives of progress.

Module Overview

The module will provide an introduction to the practical techniques of reading medieval documents, including the use of standard abbreviation forms in documents, the use of standard phrasing in administrative documents, and the development of this practice in large administrations (including royal and ecclesiastical chanceries). It will also introduce students to standard practice in document description of literary manuscrips as well as documentary sources and to the development of both literary and administrative hands in this period.

Module Overview

What did liberty mean in an age of kings and queens, and just how revolutionary were the political ideas of Tudor and Stuart Britain? This module introduces students to the key approaches and methodologies of the ‘history of ideas’ by exploring how scholars have studied radical political and religious thought in early modern Britain. Covering over 200 years of British history (1485–1714), students will examine the major events of the Tudor and Stuart reigns and engage with the writings of some of the period’s most influential thinkers, including Thomas More, John Milton, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, alongside works of literature and visual culture. Ultimately, the module encourages students to reflect on how debates about liberty, authority, and resistance in Tudor and Stuart Britain continue to resonate far beyond the early modern period.

Module Overview

This module explores the Roman world beyond the Italian peninsula, examining changes in societies in Europe, the Near East, and North Africa, from the Iron Age through to the post-Roman world. It focuses on the diversity of evidence for what it meant to ‘be(come) Roman’ in the provinces of the Roman Empire, with a focus on local people and agency.

Module Overview

Teaching History deepens students' understanding of the practice of teaching history in the classroom. The module encourages students, especially but not exclusively those who may be considering a career in education (or related industries), to think more deeply about pedagogic theory and teaching practice in History. Students will be given the opportunity to gain some practical experience in instructing their peers and online audiences. There will be a strong focus on reflecting on prior learning experiences and the module will begin by providing students with an overview of the history of history teaching. History teaching will be examined at primary and secondary level, and in other educational contexts.

Module Overview

This module explores the different cultures of the medieval Mediterranean through conflict, assimilation, dialogues and exchanges, with a primary focus between the eight and the twelfth centuries. The module is divided in three sections: first, we will consider the history of Jerusalem from the Jewish city, through the Roman and Christian cities, to the Islamic rulership and the Crusades. How and to what extent was the city reshaped in each of its different phases? What happened to the sacred sites of the different religious groups? In the second section we move to the central region of the Mediterranean, to Ifriqyia (North Africa) and the south of Italy (ca. 900-1150), focusing on the assimilation of different cultures at the court of the Norman king Roger II. In the final section, we will look at travelling objects from different cultures, such as Roman and Christian marble columns reused in mosques, Islamic ivories and rock crystal vessels in Christian treasuries, and also spoils of war.

Module Overview

Language enables us to communicate about ourselves and the world around us. However, it is not clear how language achieves this nor is it clear what influence language has on these activities. Therefore, in this module we will examine language itself. We will try to clarify its nature and how it works.

Module Overview

The module introduces students to the origins and development of theatrical traditions in ancient Greece and Rome. The module explores key dramatic genres (tragedy, comedy, and satyr play) through close readings of representative works by authors such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plautus, and Terence. Students will examine drama as a literary, performative, and social practice, considering its religious, political, and cultural contexts. Particular attention is paid to themes such as myth, power, gender, citizenship, and the relationship between individual and community.

Module Overview

This module introduces students to the lives and experiences of women in the ancient and medieval worlds. By engaging with a wide range of material, visual, and written evidence, including poetry and epic, portraiture, inscriptions, legal texts, civic and domestic architecture, and human burial, students will investigate both the real historical circumstances of women’s lives and the ways in which they were constructed, represented, and perceived. The approach is thematic, covering changing concepts of sex and gender and examining the intersection between these categories and social status, age, occupations, and other identity markers.

Module Overview

The module is designed to give students practical experience of the workplace. It is expected that students will define, plan and undertake a specific project. Students have the opportunity to gain experience and skills in a range of tasks appropriate to sector-specific professional roles.

Please note if you choose to undertake a work placement, preferably during the first term of the third year, both of your optional choices in the second term must be Classical Studies modules (excluding Medieval, Early Modern, Conservation, and Digital Heritage modules).

Module Overview

This module focuses on the archaeology, visual and material culture, and history of pre-Roman, Roman, through to early medieval Lincoln. Students will explore the settlement, from pre-Roman, through the Roman legionary fortress, urban veteran colony, to the sub-Roman and early Medieval settlement, developing an understanding of the role and character of Lincoln within the broader context of change in Britain as a whole. By exploring the city’s evidence and using it to form interpretations on key themes, students will gain a detailed understanding of theoretical paradigms for social change, the nature of ‘conquest’ and military settlement, the origins and functions of cities, reasons for urban change and decline, and the significance of memory and place in the post-Roman features. The module will encourage students to consider topography, geography, social structure, belief and ritual, economic activity, power, and identities of past inhabitants of Lincoln as they engage with the objects, features, and structures of the city.

Module Overview

This module provides a survey of the history and archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East between the reign of Alexander the Great and the death of Cleopatra VII after the Roman victory at the Battle of Actium in 30 BC. Students will have the opportunity to explore the political histories, power structures, cultural developments, economic processes and shifting ideologies associated with the major Hellenistic kingdoms and ending with the Roman conquest of the eastern Mediterranean region. Teaching also considers how the Hellenistic period was a time of innovation, cultural connectivity, even globalisation, laying the foundations of a Hellenized world of city-states which endured into and defined the Roman construction of a world empire in its aftermath.

Module Overview

This module explores a key resource for understanding the thoughts, feelings, and conversations of ancient people. Graffiti, and other informal epigraphic marks, in Greek and Latin (and other languages) were marked onto fixed and portable surfaces throughout the ancient world, and their informal and non-official nature offers a unique window into the lives and worldviews of people often invisible or marginal in the standard documentary, literary, and material sources.

Module Overview

This module explores major thematic concerns across Greek and Latin literary traditions and/or a range of genres, including epic, tragedy, lyric, historiography, and philosophical writing. Rather than focusing on individual authors or texts in isolation, the module adopts a thematic and comparative approach, examining how ideas such as power, identity, gender, violence, exile, memory, love, and the human relationship with the divine are developed, contested, and reimagined across time and literary form.

Module Overview

This module gives students the opportunity to build and demonstrate problem-solving skills in the context of applied philosophy. Students will be introduced to the interdisciplinary methods of applied ethics and examine together a series of selected applied ethics case studies, drawn from a variety of different areas including health care, climate justice, AI, beginning and end of life. Students will then work on an individual project which they will present in poster form at the end of the module. The module will give students a thorough grounding in applied ethics and enable them to evidence the key employability skill of problem-solving in the context of applied philosophy.

Module Overview

This module examines how and why the culture of Britain changed in the period of increasing contact with, and eventual incorporation into, the Roman Empire. Examining the key material, behavioural, ideological and structural changes to society in the period c. 100 BC to AD 450, it will question to what degree each aspect was a wholesale incorporation of ‘foreign’ ideas, technologies and goods, a local interpretation and adoption of these importations into an existing social system, or a local creation that was distinctly Romano-British, if often termed ‘Roman’.

Module Overview

This module provides an introduction to Indian philosophy and gives students the opportunity to study some of the classic texts of Indian philosophy in detail. While texts will be studied in English translation students can also gain a familiarity with the elements of classical Indian (principally Sanskrit) philosophical vocabulary. Topics will be drawn from both the astika (orthodox Hindu) schools such as Naya-Vaisheshika and Samkhya-Yoga and nastika schools such as Jainism and Buddhism, and will cover areas such as logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and linguistics. The focus of the module will be philosophical, not interpretive or historical. Students will be expected assess the credibility of the positions and arguments advanced by classical Indian thinkers and to develop their own views in dialogue with them.

Module Overview

This module provides an interdisciplinary introduction to Classical reception, the study of how Greek and Latin languages and literature as well as Greek and Roman art and architecture have been interpreted, reinterpreted, and represented in different historical and cultural contexts. Students will look at how later cultures made use of the classical past and how they themselves have changed and shaped the way in which the ancient world is understood both in academia and in popular culture.

Module Overview

Clio, the muse of History, had many and diverse children. This module examines both the birth and development of historiography in Ancient Greek Literature. Students will use a wide range of primary sources together with secondary sources and engage with diverse types of writing, ranging from military historians to ethnographers, biographers, geographers, and female historians.

Module Overview

This module looks to provide an introduction to the preventive conservation skills needed to set out as a practicing conservator. Students have the chance to develop an understanding of practical preventive conservation and collections management procedures, and can gain experience in environmental monitoring and surveying. Topics such as integrated pest management and emergency planning are also discussed.

Module Overview

Beginning with the Royal Historical Society’s “Race, Ethnicity and Equality Report” (published in 2018), which raises urgent questions on the diversity of staff, students and curricula at History departments in UK universities, the module analyses live debates on “Decolonising the Curriculum” in higher education. We critique how histories of Empire, colonialism and slavery have been taught in Anglo-American settings, and introduce postcolonial analysis on archives, as well as the “Global South” and “indigenous knowledge” that have often been marginalised in Eurocentric historiographies.

Turning towards the University as a key apparatus of power in the contemporary world, the module then reveals the complex legacies of slavery in the making of a number of UK and US institutions including Liverpool, Bristol, Oxford (#RhodesMustFall), SOAS, University of Virginia and others. Introducing the new field of “Critical University Studies” (CUS), students will learn about the emergence of universities in former colonies including India and South Africa, as well as the phenomenon of “transnational education” that entails the establishment, by prestigious European and American institutions, of satellite campuses around the world. The module then unpacks public understandings of colonial history via recent scholarship on nationalism, patriotism, museums and memories, and ends with a hopeful reflection on pedagogies that will be more inclusive and intersectional in terms of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. This module will be particularly suited to students who intend to develop careers in education.

Module Overview

This module will explore the significance of time (the past, present, and future), belief, and power in landscapes of early historical Britain (c. 200 BC to c. AD 800). Landscape was the largest and most visible medium that people could use to communicate who they were and to negotiate their place in the world. Landscape will be discussed as material culture writ large whereby the features and meanings of the past confront and constitute the creation of landscape in any given present. The significance of, for example, Neolithic cursus monuments, Bronze Age barrows, Iron Age 'hillforts', and Romano-Celtic temples will be examined in how they endured and were (re)interpreted in later periods to create complex significances and communicate aspects of group identities. The module will challenge boundaries by encouraging students to consider the complexity of relationship between past, present, and future, as well as between different 'site types', periods, and types of material.

Module Overview

The cultural heritage sector increasingly offers opportunities for the application of digital technologies as communication, research and recording tools. This module enables students to become familiar with some of these advanced recording techniques for the study and recording of objects.

Module Overview

This module aims to provide an introduction to the basics of Greek for students with little to no prior experience of the language. Students can gain the ability to translate and interpret sentences and short passages in prose and verse up to intermediate difficulty. This can aid sensitive reading of primary sources from the Classical world in translation, as well as in the original at higher levels of study.

Module Overview

This module aims to provide a continued introduction to the basics of Greek for students with little to no prior experience of the language. Students can refine their ability to translate and interpret sentences and short to medium-length passages in prose and verse up to advanced difficulty. This helps develop a foundation for sensitive reading of primary sources from the Classical world in translation, as well as in the original at higher levels of study.

Module Overview

This module explores fundamental questions about humanity's relationship with the natural world through the lens of philosophical inquiry. Drawing on both classical and contemporary thinkers, we examine key debates in environmental ethics, from the intrinsic value of nature to questions of ecological justice and sustainability. Students will critically assess different philosophical approaches to pressing environmental challenges, including climate change and biodiversity loss, while developing sophisticated arguments about environmental responsibility and stewardship. The module combines careful philosophical analysis with practical application, making it relevant for students interested in environmental issues, public policy, or fundamental questions about human-nature relationships. Through thoughtful discussion and analysis, students will be able to develop valuable critical thinking skills while engaging with one of the most significant intellectual challenges of our time.

Module Overview

The aim of this module is to give students a thorough understanding of two intimately related philosophical traditions that came to prominence in the 19th and 20th centuries: existentialism and phenomenology. Each attempts to address the nature and meaning of human existence from the perspective of individual, first-person experience, focusing in particular on fundamental questions of being, meaning, death, nihilism, freedom, responsibility, value, human relations, and religious faith.

The module will examine selected existential themes through the writings of thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, De Beauvoir, and Camus. Since existentialism is as much a artistic phenomenon as a philosophical one, students will also be given the opportunity to explore existentialist ideas in the works of various literary figures, such as Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and Milan Kundera.

Module Overview

Explore a wide range of cutting-edge digital approaches to studying the past through a significant and growing area of research, the digital humanities. By studying this module, you can focus on developing the practical skills, techniques, and methodologies that can play a vital role in your future studies and career.

The module provides opportunities to enhance, analyse, and interpret humanistic endeavours through approaches such as social network analysis, digital mapping, data visualisation, and textual analysis. You can also explore the impact and potential of artificial intelligence on the study of humanities in the digital worlds.

Module Overview

This student-led module allows students the opportunity to design a course of study equivalent to a 15-credit module. In collaboration with a lecturer in the School of History and Heritage, students can choose A. to produce an extended essay on a Classical Studies topic not specifically covered by current core or optional modules, B. gain a new skill, or C. undertake a creative project. Examples of A. might include ancient myth, epigrams, or drama; examples of B. might include digital drawing or epigraphic skills; examples of C. might include designing an exhibition.

Module Overview

This student-led module allows students the opportunity to design a course of study equivalent to a 15-credit module. In collaboration with a lecturer in the School of History and Heritage, students can choose A. to produce an extended essay on a Classical Studies topic not specifically covered by current core or optional modules, B. gain a new skill, or C. undertake a creative project. Examples of A. might include ancient myth, epigrams, or drama; examples of B. might include digital drawing or epigraphic skills; examples of C. might include designing an exhibition.

Module Overview

King Alfred, Viking invasions, the Norman Conquest, Domesday Book, wars of succession spilling over the Channel into Normandy: some of the most emblematic and controversial moments and monuments of English history date to the period students will encounter in this module. But did this period really see the birth of England? How was the modest kingdom of Wessex of the late ninth century transformed in the following two centuries into a state that some historians believe to have been unusually precocious, innovative and efficient in its governing structures? What role did other parties and peoples from the British Isles and further afield play in these developments? And after the extraordinary events of 1066 – which saw England conquered by the Normans – how do we explain a subsequent political crisis so devastating that the survival of the kingdom itself was in doubt by the middle of the twelfth century?

These questions lie at the heart of this module, which will ask students to examine primary sources and engage in longstanding historiographical debates on a weekly basis. Special attention will be paid to showing students how historians use source materials of varying kinds from the Middle Ages to develop, nuance or challenge rival interpretations of this formative period in the early English, Anglo-Scandinavian, and Anglo-Norman worlds; in the process, students will increase their knowledge, broaden their skills, and begin to think about the exciting challenges historians face when trying to understand the many complex and contested aspects of England’s medieval past.

This module will show students that the origins of the country we now know as England merit close and detailed examination. For while historians argue about whether England existed in a recognisable form in 871 when King Alfred became king of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex, that England not only existed by the middle of the twelfth century but was one of the most powerful kingdoms in Europe, its territorial influence spreading far beyond the Channel, is a matter of consensus. How and when did an idea of England take shape and what were the formative historical processes that made that idea reality? An exploration of these ideas underpins this module, which will introduce students to a range of source materials, both written and archaeological, ranging from coins to chronicles, and castles to collections of documents known as cartularies.

Accordingly, this module will ask students to consider important questions about the origins of government, the beginnings of legal and administrative structures that in some sense persist to this day, and the distribution of the economic resources that made kingship and feudal society possible. By extension, this module will offer students a chance to acquaint themselves with the skills and techniques that allow historians to handle the complex and wide-ranging sources we rely upon to study the period in question, in the process demystifying the study of the Middle Ages and providing a solid basis for further study of medieval societies.

Module Overview

The University has a strong commitment to providing academic programmes with high vocational relevance, which is maintained through working links with local, national and international organisations and, in particular, through student work placements.

The Placement Year aims to give students a continuous experience of full-time work within an organisation. It should be a three-way co-operative activity between employer, student and University from which all parties benefit. It is more than simply obtaining work during a gap in study – work placements should enable students to experience at first hand the daily workings of an organisation while setting that experience in the broader context of their studies.

The Placement Year constitutes a work placement during an academic year, funded by full-time paid employment* taking place between Level 2 and Level 3. The minimum duration of placement is 39 weeks.

Students wishing to undertake the work placement year must successfully complete the Level 2 of their programme.

All students on the Placement Year as part of their full-time undergraduate study will remain enrolled with the University during the period of placement and receive support. Students originally enrolled on 3-year programmes wishing to transfer to the 4-year programme must do so before the start of their placement, should gain the consent of their funders, where appropriate, and advise the University of their intention before the September enrolment.

Module Overview

This module explores ancient inscriptions as evidence for understanding society and culture by considering them as both texts as well as meaningful objects with archaeological contexts and material characteristics. Students will gain skills in finding and using epigraphic evidence to address thematic and topical questions about the ancient world. From stamps on ceramics to monumental stone inscriptions, the module will review the variety of evidence across a wide geographical area and chronological range. Students will become proficient in using relevant online databases and gain knowledge of the methods used for recording and studying inscriptions.

Module Overview

This module aims to provide a continued introduction to the basics of Latin for students with little to no prior experience of the language. Students can refine their ability to translate and interpret sentences and short to medium-length passages in prose and verse up to advanced difficulty. This can aid sensitive reading of primary sources from the Classical world in translation, as well as in the original at higher levels of study.

Module Overview

This module encourages students to connect making with how we understand and interpret historical objects. Through physically engaging with materials and craft processes, students learn experientially and gain insights into how material properties and making processes provide evidence for the past.

Module Overview

This module examines key British medieval texts, primarily in Middle English, from the High and Late Middle Ages (that is, from approximately the twelfth century to fifteenth century). It explores the breadth of literary activity in the period through a variety of genres--such as debate poetry, ethnographies, beast fables, romance, dream visions, satire, devotional and mystical writings, and mystery plays--and the evolution of a new form of English (the precursor of modern English), revealing that the medieval period is, in truth, a far cry from the misnomer by which it is often identified, the ‘dark ages’.

Module Overview

How can history and heritage be more inclusive of LGBTIQ+ lives and experiences? And how can queer perspectives help us to better understand the complexities of the past? This module responds to these questions by examining queer histories from the Ancient World to the present day. Taking a global view, the module investigates how concepts such as sex, sexuality, gender, the body, friendship and family have been organised in diverse ways across different times and places. In addition to considering how particular sexual and gender identities have emerged, the module also engages with ideas of queer history as a method for historical enquiry: one that is sceptical about binary analyses and linear narratives of progress.

Module Overview

The module will provide an introduction to the practical techniques of reading medieval documents, including the use of standard abbreviation forms in documents, the use of standard phrasing in administrative documents, and the development of this practice in large administrations (including royal and ecclesiastical chanceries). It will also introduce students to standard practice in document description of literary manuscrips as well as documentary sources and to the development of both literary and administrative hands in this period. Within a supportive context students will be able to develop their reading skills and consider the issues surrounding detailed transcription of documents and limited editing.

Module Overview

Students studying Renaissance Literature have the opportunity to look in detail at a range of texts from the late Elizabethan period to the mid-1630s, including work by Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson and Mary Wroth. They also have the chance to explore the historical and cultural contexts in which these texts were produced, and the effects that they had on the politics and culture of the British Isles in the period. Lectures aim to examine post-Reformation England and late humanism, patronage, gender relations, early modern literary theory, education and philosophy.

Module Overview

This module explores the Roman world beyond the Italian peninsula, examining changes in societies in Europe, the Near East, and North Africa, from the Iron Age through to the post-Roman world. It focuses on the diversity of evidence for what it meant to ‘be(come) Roman’ in the provinces of the Roman Empire, with a focus on local people and agency. The geographic focus each year reflects the research interests of staff and students, giving students the opportunity to engage comparatively with a range of experiences of empire. The module will centre on key themes and debates about provincial identities, social change, and cultural interactions. Each theme will be explored with a range of archaeological, visual, textual, and literary evidence, with particular attention to the diversity of provincial experiences and critical engagement with interpretations of empire and identity. Students will learn to evaluate evidence and scholarship as they explore the construction of identities and the negotiations of diverse relationships to imperial power.

Module Overview

Classical Studies students have the opportunity to spend a term studying at one of the University’s partner institutions in North America or Europe where they undertake a course load of equivalent standard to that of the programme at Lincoln.

Studying abroad offers unique opportunities for personal development. It offers enhanced sporting, cultural, and other activities to enhance your overall profile, alongside experience of adapting to and working effectively within a different academic culture.

Students must obtain a 2:1 or higher at Level 1 in order to be considered for participation in the exchange. Students must complete a 500-word essay explaining why they wish to participate and may be required to attend an interview. A limited number of places will be available each year, and participation is at the discretion of the module coordinator and the Programme Leader.

Module Overview

Teaching History deepens students' understanding of the practice of teaching history in the classroom. The module encourages students, especially but not exclusively those who may be considering a career in education (or related industries), to think more deeply about pedagogic theory and teaching practice. Students will be given the opportunity to gain some practical experience in instructing their peers and online audiences. There will be a strong focus on reflecting on prior learning experiences and the module will begin by providing students with an overview of the history of history teaching. History teaching will be examined at primary and secondary level, and in other educational contexts.

Module Overview

This module examines Arthurian narratives, myths, and traditions within a variety of contexts and media, and traces a variety of themes associated with Arthur and his court, including history and national identity; violence; kingship and rule; loyalty and betrayal; and love, sex, and gender roles.

Students will be expected to assess the importance of a myth that spans more than a millennium and address how medieval texts made meaning within their specific socio-cultural situations, as well as how later periods make meaning through their deployment of the medieval in new contexts.

Module Overview

Language enables us to communicate about ourselves and the world around us. However, it is not clear how language achieves this nor is it clear what influence language has on these activities. Therefore, in this module we will examine language itself. We will try to clarify its nature and how it works.

Module Overview

This module explores the social, political and cultural realities shaped and framed by holy wars during the Middle Ages, with a primary focus on the Mediterranean (ca. 600-1200). We will explore and question the concept of holy wars from both Christian and Muslim perspectives, considering also the Byzantine responses to Jihad. Among the different locations under consideration in this module and linked to the framework of Crusades, we will focus on two zones of encounters and conflicts between Islam and Christianity: the Iberian Peninsula and the South of Italy. Beyond this, we will explore the eastern shores of the Mediterranean by focusing on the struggle for the dominion of the holy city of Jerusalem.

This module will help students develop a broad set of critical and analytical skills, while engaging with a variety of textual, visual and material sources. Students will gain an understanding of how the interplay of social, religious, political and cultural phenomena contributed to shaping a complex world – that of the crusades – which was more diverse and multilayered than some later historiographical representations might suggest.

Module Overview

The module introduces students to the origins and development of theatrical traditions in ancient Greece and Rome. The module explores key dramatic genres (tragedy, comedy, and satyr play) through close readings of representative works by authors such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plautus, and Terence. Students will examine drama as a literary, performative, and social practice, considering its religious, political, and cultural contexts. Particular attention is paid to themes such as myth, power, gender, citizenship, and the relationship between individual and community.

Module Overview

This module introduces students to the lives and experiences of women in the ancient and medieval worlds. By engaging with a wide range of material, visual, and written evidence, including poetry and epic, portraiture, inscriptions, legal texts, civic and domestic architecture, and human burial, students will investigate both the real historical circumstances of women’s lives and the ways in which they were constructed, represented, and perceived. The approach is thematic, covering changing concepts of sex and gender and examining the intersection between these categories and social status, age, occupations, and other identity markers.

Module Overview

This module concentrates on the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, with a particular emphasis on The Canterbury Tales, perhaps Chaucer’s most famous work. Students will have the opportunity to examine the General Prologue and a variety of tales in relation to their historical context and literary antecedents, and, throughout, specific attention will be given to questions of genre (ranging from fable and epic to satire and romance), literary authority, narrative construction, and medieval aesthetics.

Module Overview

This module explores a key resource for understanding the thoughts, feelings and conversations of ancient people. Graffiti in Greek and Latin (and other languages) were marked onto fixed and portable surfaces throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, and their informal and non-official nature offers a unique window into the lives and worldviews of people often invisible or marginal in standard documentary, literary and material sources

Module Overview

This module will give students an opportunity to engage in close philosophical study of texts by the most influential ancient philosophers. Texts will be studied in English translation. They will include works by Plato and Aristotle, as well as by less familiar philosophers of the ancient world (c. 500 BC-500 AD Greece and Rome). The focus of the module will be philosophical, not interpretive or historical: students will be expected assess the credibility of the positions and arguments advanced by Plato, Aristotle and others and to develop their own views in dialogue with these thinkers.

Module Overview

This module explores major thematic concerns across Greek and Latin literary traditions and/or a range of genres, including epic, tragedy, lyric, historiography, and philosophical writing. Rather than focusing on individual authors or texts in isolation, the module adopts a thematic and comparative approach, examining how ideas such as power, identity, gender, violence, exile, memory, love, and the human relationship with the divine are developed, contested, and reimagined across time and literary form.

Module Overview

This module gives students the opportunity to build and demonstrate problem-solving skills in the context of applied philosophy. Students will be introduced to the interdisciplinary methods of applied ethics and examine together a series of selected applied ethics case studies, drawn from a variety of different areas including health care, climate justice, AI, beginning and end of life. Students will then work on an individual project which they will present in poster form at the end of the module. The module will give students a thorough grounding in applied ethics and enable them to evidence the key employability skill of problem-solving in the context of applied philosophy.

Module Overview

This module examines how and why the culture of Britain changed in the period of increasing contact with, and eventual incorporation into, the Roman Empire. Examining the key material, behavioural, ideological and structural changes to society in the period c. 100 BC to AD 450, it will question to what degree each aspect was a wholesale incorporation of ‘foreign’ ideas, technologies and goods, a local interpretation and adoption of these importations into an existing social system, or a local creation that was distinctly Romano-British, if often termed ‘Roman’.

Module Overview

This module examines both the birth and development of the concept of chivalry in the Middle Ages. Students can use a wide range of primary sources, as well as medieval and contemporary historiography, to explore how the role, image and function of medieval knights evolved over time.

Module Overview

The module will give students experience of volunteering (e.g. teaching students Latin or Greek, volunteering for an archaeological project, etc.) and/or of relevant training (e.g. curatorial, archaeological), and/or of work (e.g. an internship in a museum). It is expected that students will define, plan and undertake a specific project, which must be approved by the Module Coordinator.

Module Overview

This module provides an introduction to Indian philosophy and gives students the opportunity to study some of the classic texts of Indian philosophy in detail. While texts will be studied in English translation students will also gain a familiarity with the elements of classical Indian (principally Sanskrit) philosophical vocabulary. Topics will be drawn from both the astika (orthodox Hindu) schools such as Naya-Vaisheshika and Samkhya-Yoga and nastika schools such as Jainism and Buddhism, and will cover areas such as logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and linguistics.

Module Overview

This module provides an interdisciplinary introduction to Classical reception, the study of how Greek and Latin languages and literature as well as Greek and Roman art and architecture have been interpreted, reinterpreted, and represented in different historical and cultural contexts. Students will look at how later cultures made use of the classical past and how they themselves have changed and shaped the way in which the ancient world is understood both in academia and in popular culture.

Module Overview

Clio, the muse of History, had many and diverse children. This module examines both the birth and development of historiography in Ancient Greek Literature. Students will use a wide range of primary sources together with secondary sources and engage with diverse types of writing, ranging from military historians to ethnographers, biographers, geographers, and female historians.

Module Overview

This module will enable students to engage in the research and development of displays through the process of curating an exhibition for the museum or heritage sector. Students will select objects and structure this selection through an appropriate narrative. They will propose modes and examples of interpretation such as gallery text, audio or visual aids. The emphasis will be on developing knowledge and understanding of the role and responsibilities of the curator, and the project will enable students to evidence a focused and critically rigorous curatorial rationale.

Module Overview

This module will explore the significance of time (the past, present, and future), belief, and power in landscapes of early historical Britain (c. 200 BC to c. AD 800). Landscape was the largest and most visible medium that people could use to communicate who they were and to negotiate their place in the world. Landscape will be discussed as material culture writ large whereby the features and meanings of the past confront and constitute the creation of landscape in any given present.

Module Overview

This module introduces students to the use of digital technologies in the documentation, analysis, and communication of cultural heritage. Through both theoretical exploration and practical application, students will develop the skills to evaluate and employ advanced digital recording techniques in the study and interpretation of heritage objects and sites.

Module Overview

This module aims to provide an introduction to the basics of Greek for students with little to no prior experience of the language. Students can gain the ability to translate and interpret sentences and short passages in prose and verse up to intermediate difficulty. This can aid sensitive reading of primary sources from the Classical world in translation, as well as in the original at higher levels of study.

Module Overview

This module aims to provide a continued introduction to the basics of Greek for students with little to no prior experience of the language. Students can refine their ability to translate and interpret sentences and short to medium-length passages in prose and verse up to advanced difficulty. This helps develop a foundation for sensitive reading of primary sources from the Classical world in translation, as well as in the original at higher levels of study.

Module Overview

This module explores fundamental questions about humanity's relationship with the natural world through the lens of philosophical inquiry. Drawing on both classical and contemporary thinkers, we examine key debates in environmental ethics, from the intrinsic value of nature to questions of ecological justice and sustainability. Students will critically assess different philosophical approaches to pressing environmental challenges, including climate change and biodiversity loss, while developing sophisticated arguments about environmental responsibility and stewardship. The module combines careful philosophical analysis with practical application, making it relevant for students interested in environmental issues, public policy, or fundamental questions about human-nature relationships. Through thoughtful discussion and analysis, students will be able to develop valuable critical thinking skills while engaging with one of the most significant intellectual challenges of our time.

Module Overview

The aim of this module is to give students a thorough understanding of two intimately related philosophical traditions that came to prominence in the 19th and 20th centuries: existentialism and phenomenology. Each attempts to address the nature and meaning of human existence from the perspective of individual, first-person experience, focusing in particular on fundamental questions of being, meaning, death, nihilism, freedom, responsibility, value, human relations, and religious faith. The module will examine selected existential themes through the writings of thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, De Beauvoir, and Camus. Since existentialism is as much a artistic phenomenon as a philosophical one, students will also be given the opportunity to explore existentialist ideas in the works of various literary figures, such as Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and Milan Kundera.

Module Overview

This module will explore the development, decline and revival of stained glass from the early middle ages to the mid twentieth century. The focus will be on British stained glass with particular reference to windows that students can visit in person, particularly in Lincoln Cathedral and the parish churches of the region. Students will learn to analyse windows through a number of methodological frameworks in particular: production (design and manufacture), consumption (patronage, iconography and meaning) and aesthetics (style, drawing, manipulation of light).

Module Overview

By the late twelfth century, England’s rulers – the Angevin kings - were among the wealthiest and most powerful in Western Europe. At the time of his accession, King Richard the Lionheart ruled over a vast collection of territories (later known as the Angevin Empire), which stretched from the borders with Scotland in the North to the Pyrenees in the South. Yet, at the time of his brother King John’s death in 1216, most Angevin possessions on the continent had been lost and baronial rebels had overrun more than half of England. Using medieval records and chronicles in English translation, this module explores the dramatic reigns of King Richard and King John, and their reputations as rulers, asking whether the former really was a legend in his own lifetime, and whether the latter deserves to be remembered as one of our most disastrous medieval monarchs. Together we will consider King Richard’s participation in the Third Crusade, the impact of his absence on his English subjects, and his struggle to retain Angevin territories on the Continent. We will also analyse the loss of Normandy under King John, John’s violent quarrel with Pope Innocent III over the appointment of Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, the growth of opposition to John in England, the birth of Magna Carta, and the outcome of the civil war that was still raging on John’s death (including the Battle of Lincoln of 1217).

Module Overview

This module explores ancient inscriptions as evidence for understanding society and culture by considering them as both texts as well as meaningful objects with archaeological contexts and material characteristics. Students will gain skills in finding and using epigraphic evidence to address thematic and topical questions about the ancient world. From stamps on ceramics to monumental stone inscriptions, the module will review the variety of evidence across a wide geographical area and chronological range. Students will become proficient in using relevant online databases and gain knowledge of the methods used for recording and studying inscriptions.

Module Overview

This module aims to consolidate students' knowledge of and comfort with the principles of the Greek language through sustained reading of substantial extracts from a variety of prose authors. Classes will be structured around guided translation and interpretation of set texts in Attic dialect by Xenophon, Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle. Commentary focuses on points of grammar, syntax and vocabulary, as well as historical context and significance.

Module Overview

This module aims to consolidate students' knowledge of and comfort with the principles of the Greek language through sustained reading of substantial extracts from a variety of verse authors. Classes will be structured around guided translation and interpretation of select set texts in Attic dialect by Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, and in Ionic dialect by Homer. Commentary focuses on points of grammar, syntax and vocabulary, as well as historical context and significance. Students can also acquire a familiarity with metre and scansion in Greek poetry.

Module Overview

This module aims to provide a continued introduction to the basics of Latin for students with little to no prior experience of the language. Students can refine their ability to translate and interpret sentences and short to medium-length passages in prose and verse up to advanced difficulty. This can aid sensitive reading of primary sources from the Classical world in translation, as well as in the original at higher levels of study.

Module Overview

This module aims to refine and extend students' mastery of the Latin language through focused reading of unadapted extracts from prose authors and poets. Classes will be structured around guided translation and interpretation of set passages, while commentary will encompass points of grammar, syntax and vocabulary; peculiarities of authorial style in the context of other major writers; historical situation and significance; and major studies of the author and text.

Module Overview

This module will investigate the history of imperial Britain through material culture. The objects of study will range from trophies looted in battle and a drum transported with enslaved Africans to Virginia, to African sculpture depicting Europeans. Historians increasingly recognise the fresh insights that objects offer to major themes in imperial history such as gender, race and class. This module responds to these new academic developments and will use objects and their biographies to study key phases and themes in the history of the British Empire. Tracing the long history of such objects can enable us to explore how objects change meanings as they move through various colonial and post-colonial contexts.

Module Overview

How can history and heritage be more inclusive of LGBTIQ+ lives and experiences? And how can queer perspectives help us to better understand the complexities of the past? This module responds to these questions by examining queer histories from the Ancient World to the present day. Taking a global view, the module investigates how concepts such as sex, sexuality, gender, the body, friendship, and family have been organised in diverse ways across different times and places. In addition to considering how particular sexual and gender identities have emerged, the module also engages with ideas of queer history as a method for historical enquiry: one that is sceptical about binary analyses and linear narratives of progress.

Module Overview

The module will provide an introduction to the practical techniques of reading medieval documents, including the use of standard abbreviation forms in documents, the use of standard phrasing in administrative documents, and the development of this practice in large administrations (including royal and ecclesiastical chanceries). It will also introduce students to standard practice in document description of literary manuscrips as well as documentary sources and to the development of both literary and administrative hands in this period. Within a supportive context students will be able to develop their reading skills and consider the issues surrounding detailed transcription of documents and limited editing.

Module Overview

What did liberty mean in an age of kings and queens, and just how revolutionary were the political ideas of Tudor and Stuart Britain? This module introduces students to the key approaches and methodologies of the ‘history of ideas’ by exploring how scholars have studied radical political and religious thought in early modern Britain. Covering over 200 years of British history (1485–1714), students will examine the major events of the Tudor and Stuart reigns and engage with the writings of some of the period’s most influential thinkers, including Thomas More, John Milton, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, alongside works of literature and visual culture. Ultimately, the module encourages students to reflect on how debates about liberty, authority, and resistance in Tudor and Stuart Britain continue to resonate far beyond the early modern period.

Module Overview

This module explores the Roman world beyond the Italian peninsula, examining changes in societies in Europe, the Near East, and North Africa, from the Iron Age through to the post-Roman world. It focuses on the diversity of evidence for what it meant to ‘be(come) Roman’ in the provinces of the Roman Empire, with a focus on local people and agency. The geographic focus each year reflects the research interests of staff and students, giving students the opportunity to engage comparatively with a range of experiences of empire. The module will centre on key themes and debates about provincial identities, social change, and cultural interactions. Each theme will be explored with a range of archaeological, visual, textual, and literary evidence, with particular attention to the diversity of provincial experiences and critical engagement with interpretations of empire and identity. Students will learn to evaluate evidence and scholarship as they explore the construction of identities and the negotiations of diverse relationships to imperial power.

Module Overview

Teaching History deepens students' understanding of the practice of teaching history in the classroom. The module encourages students, especially but not exclusively those who may be considering a career in education (or related industries), to think more deeply about pedagogic theory and teaching practice in History. Students will be given the opportunity to gain some practical experience in instructing their peers and online audiences. There will be a strong focus on reflecting on prior learning experiences and the module will begin by providing students with an overview of the history of history teaching. History teaching will be examined at primary and secondary level, and in other educational contexts.

Module Overview

This module explores the different cultures of the medieval Mediterranean through conflict, assimilation, dialogues and exchanges, with a primary focus between the eight and the twelfth centuries. The module is divided in three sections: first, we will consider the history of Jerusalem from the Jewish city, through the Roman and Christian cities, to the Islamic rulership and the Crusades. How and to what extent was the city reshaped in each of its different phases? What happened to the sacred sites of the different religious groups? In the second section we move to the central region of the Mediterranean, to Ifriqyia (North Africa) and the south of Italy (ca. 900-1150), focusing on the assimilation of different cultures at the court of the Norman king Roger II. In the final section, we will look at travelling objects from different cultures, such as Roman and Christian marble columns reused in mosques, Islamic ivories and rock crystal vessels in Christian treasuries, and also spoils of war.

Module Overview

Language enables us to communicate about ourselves and the world around us. However, it is not clear how language achieves this nor is it clear what influence language has on these activities. Therefore, in this module we will examine language itself. We will try to clarify its nature and how it works.

Module Overview

The module introduces students to the origins and development of theatrical traditions in ancient Greece and Rome. The module explores key dramatic genres (tragedy, comedy, and satyr play) through close readings of representative works by authors such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plautus, and Terence. Students will examine drama as a literary, performative, and social practice, considering its religious, political, and cultural contexts. Particular attention is paid to themes such as myth, power, gender, citizenship, and the relationship between individual and community.

Module Overview

This module introduces students to the lives and experiences of women in the ancient and medieval worlds. By engaging with a wide range of material, visual, and written evidence, including poetry and epic, portraiture, inscriptions, legal texts, civic and domestic architecture, and human burial, students will investigate both the real historical circumstances of women’s lives and the ways in which they were constructed, represented, and perceived. The approach is thematic, covering changing concepts of sex and gender and examining the intersection between these categories and social status, age, occupations, and other identity markers. We shall consider the experience of women at different stages of their lives, from birth, youth, marriage, and motherhood to old age, and how women were remembered and commemorated after death. Women also engaged with the civic and cultural institutions and we shall also consider their participation in religious rituals, civic patronage, and legal affairs.

Module Overview

The module is designed to give students practical experience of the workplace. It is expected that students will define, plan and undertake a specific project. Students have the opportunity to gain experience and skills in a range of tasks appropriate to sector-specific professional roles.

Please note if you choose to undertake a work placement, preferably during the first term of the third year, both of your optional choices in the second term must be Classical Studies modules (excluding Medieval, Early Modern, Conservation, and Digital Heritage modules).