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School of History, Welsh History and Archaeology

Bangor’s postgraduate training gains national award

The Arts and Humanities Research Council has awarded £50,000 to Professor Duncan Tanner to deliver a nationwide postgraduate training scheme for modern and contemporary historians. It will be delivered through four one day workshops, held in Manchester and repeated in London. It is available free of charge to PhD students, and runs in the academic year 2008-9.

The scheme is modelled on one of Professor Tanner’s current Bangor postgraduate training modules, which teaches Bangor postgraduates how to be efficient but also imaginative researchers. However, the national programme is larger and will also draw on the specialist skills of archivists from University College London, Churchill College Cambridge, the Bodleian Library Oxford and other archives, as well as the skills of other academics and the experience of current and former government policy advisors. The scheme covers the changing contents of political archives, academic use of the Freedom of Information Act and how to locate and use media and oral history sources.  Many of the sessions are relevant to researchers from other disciplines. A limited number of places at each session will be reserved for non-historians.

Professor Tanner said, ‘From BA level onwards, the School of History, Welsh History and Archaeology teaches its students how to identify and prepare research projects in periods ranging from pre-history to the present.  Successful research requires core skills, a good deal of shrewd preparation, a fair amount of perspiration, a little bit of inspiration and a smattering of luck.  We can’t create a good researcher from nothing; and we can’t teach people how to be lucky. But we pass on the forensic and detective skills which we have learnt ourselves, and this can help students to see beyond the usual approaches and arguments and to identify new ideas and sources.’

The dates of sessions have still to be determined, but will appear on the programme’s website. To receive details as they become available, contact Stephanie Dolben on wisca@bangor.ac.uk.