Congratulations on your offer of a place at Îá°®³Ô¹Ï
Congratulations on your offer to study one of our History, Heritage and Archaeology programmes here at Îá°®³Ô¹Ï. We're thrilled to welcome you into our community. To help you get familiar with us before you begin in September, we've compiled some resources to address common questions and provide valuable information.
Stay connected with us on social media for the latest updates, news, and events. We look forward to meeting you soon and wish you all the best as you get ready for your studies.
What to expect as a History, Heritage and Archaeology student
Our courses are taught by world-leading academics and practitioners who are passionate about their subjects. You will learn from experts who are at the forefront of their fields, and you will have access to a wealth of resources to support your studies. Our dedicated team of academics are not just knowledgeable but also have a diverse range of expertise and passions.
We are committed to providing a supportive and inclusive environment for all of our students. We have a dedicated team of staff who are here to help you with your studies and to make sure that you have a positive experience at Bangor.
In the School we frequently have pizza nights, quizzes and trips including a recent trip to the Christmas markets in Manchester so you'll have the opportunity to meet and socialise with staff and students from different disciplines within the school.Â
Watch our video
Hi, I'm Dr Marc Collinson from the School of History, Law and Social Sciences here at Îá°®³Ô¹Ï.
Speaking in particular about History, Heritage and Archaeology.
So congratulations. Here at Bangor we study a vast variety of different parts of the past.
We start all the way from pre-history and work all the way through to the 1990s.
Colleagues looking at things like dictatorship, nationalism, the land of the state, the Reformation, the Tudors, the Medieval Period, anything from 1066, all the way to now.
We're really interested in our students and making sure our students enjoy how they study the past, try to sort of teach them to understand what the past should look like, how they can understand it for themselves, make them into the Historians of the future, but also just to sort of ensure that they enjoy a period of study.
We're really keen for anyone to join us, and we're also really keen thinking about what people want to go going forward.
We are, of course, in a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Well, in fact, two World Heritage sites with the castles and the slate quarries, this is the perfect place to study History.
It's got everything you could want anything to fill your extra time alongside all the other things are activities you can do about being a university student.
Frequently Asked Questions
Firstly, every week will give you a variety of classes and experiences. You'll be attending lectures with our historians and archaeologists and participating in seminars. Our seminars are always geared around discussion of an engaging topic in a small group environment. You will similarly encounter workshops: these are practical classes to equip you with skills, such as piloting a drone. Your week is also likely to involve field trips and museum visits, exploring our stunning historical landscape in north Wales. In between, you’ll be undertaking guided reading and preparation, with plenty of opportunities for one-to-one meetings with our lecturers.
Typically, in the first year of an undergraduate degree with us you’ll have timetabled classes for around 10-14 hours per week. This will vary slightly depending on which modules you choose, and for our Archaeology and Heritage options in particular the contact hours will be higher in some weeks if a site visit or trip is planned. Additionally to this, you can arrange meetings with your lecturers to give further advice about your modules and assessments, and you’ll also have a Personal Tutor who is there to help support you throughout your studies.
Îá°®³Ô¹Ïing a subject that gives you joy makes your university experience more pleasant and successful. Our History degrees encourage crucial critical thinking and provide you with independent research and communication skills, explaining why so many of our graduates go on to work in the media, civil service and in business. We pride ourselves on small classes with expert lecturers, which gives a fantastic student experience, helping to cultivate confidence as you enter the graduate job market. The world is your oyster with a History degree!
Please don’t worry! We don’t expect you to have any academic experiences of studying Archaeology and Heritage as they are not generally offered in schools. All our first-year modules are geared around introducing you to the basics, familiarising you with key techniques, and, crucially, taking you out to examine the treasure trove of archaeological sites around us in north Wales. These include burial mounds, hill forts and the UNESCO-designated castles and slate quarrying landscape. We will also give you vital digital humanities training, such as deploying Virtual Reality technology in the heritage industry.
Meet your lecturers
Dr Mari William
History is completely relevant to understanding the troubled world we see on the news and in our social media feeds during the 21st century. For example, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and 'fake news' are causing quite a moral dilemma at the moment, and looking back through History at other examples of technology changing society helps to put it all in context e.g. the invention of the printing press in the Early Modern Period, the arrival of television during the 1950s etc.
'I like the fact that there are so many different ways of looking at History, and that these keep changing. For some years I have been very interested in subjects such as the history of food, the history of animals and even the history of tattoos. When I was doing my A Levels I would never have imagined studying these, and I am so grateful for how being a historian enables me to keep learning new things! History, and related fields such as Archaeology and Heritage, are full of inspiring stories.
As a small child I remember seeing on TV the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989, and I wanted to know why there was a wall in the first place, and why people were celebrating that it was being demolished. From then on modern history was one of my main interests, and when I had the opportunity a few years ago to teach seminars about the Berlin Wall I was delighted, especially as I was able to borrow a piece of The Wall that was in the possession of one of my colleagues to show my students!
I would have liked to have had dinner with the clothing designer Laura Ashley during the late 1970s, when her flowery, chintzy prints were at the height of their popularity on dresses and home accessories. Laura Ashley came from a Welsh background, and established a factory in Carno in mid Wales as her business grew. I would have enjoyed chatting with her about the contrast between running a world-renowned company and doing so from a rural, relatively remote area of Wales. I would also have asked her about what it was like to be a woman in the business world in the 1970s. Laura Ashley died in an accident at her home in 1985, but it's interesting that many of her patterns are now trending on TikTok and Instagram under the hashtag #cottagecore.
