Progressing your Local History Research (346)

This course is for any local historian looking for inspiration and advice though it will especially appeal to those who have already begun their research. The course builds upon the themes, skills and records considered in the Getting Started with Local History course, developing research skills and moving to the period before the Industrial Revolution to records less familiar to the local or family historian. We begin by looking at your place in the context of Britains landscape and physical environment, looking at topics such as place name origin, landscape, structures and archaeology. The middle weeks of the course are focussed on historical sources and how they can be used in local history. You will discover what and how to research in the medieval and early modern periods, centuries of rich history to be uncovered for your places. We will then move onto bringing the pieces of your research together for analysis, selecting appropriate analysis techniques and thinking about how to share your findings.

Local historians research places across time, considering the physical environment and population of particular places that hold meaning to them. It can be a hugely enriching experience to uncover the history of the places you live in, visit or are connected to through your ancestors. Local history is a cross-section through time, addressing all kinds of subjects and manner of sources so that it brings to life the story of a place over generations or even centuries.

This is the second of two courses developed with the British Association for Local History (BALH), the national organisation for local history. The first course, Getting Started with Local History, is an introduction to local history and focusses on getting started with a local history project using records from around the time of the Industrial Revolution to the present day. It is suggested that students take the Getting Started with Local History course before embarking on this course.

At the end of this course students will be able to:

-Interpret the physical environment of a place and its prehistory.
-Explain key themes and sources for local history research in the medieval and early modern periods.
-Analyse their local history research.
-Produce a local history output that can be shared.

Students will be encouraged to work on a local history project of their choosing during the course.

• * Places in context
• * Medieval local history (c.500-c.1500)
• * Early modern local history (c.1500-1780)
• * Analysing and sharing local history

Each lesson includes lesson notes, activities and forum exercises for students to complete during the week and a one-hour live tutorial (text chat or Zoom) with the tutor and the rest of the class. Times for the tutorials are set at the beginning of each course by the tutor.

See How the Courses Work.

Relevant Countries: England, Wales, Scotland