Study abroad

Your education extends beyond the university campus. We support you in expanding your education through offering the opportunity to spend a year or a term studying abroad at one of our partner universities. The four-year version of our degree allows you to spend the third year abroad or employed on a placement abroad, while otherwise remaining identical to the three-year course. Studying abroad allows you to experience other cultures and languages, to broaden your degree socially and academically, and to demonstrate to employers that you are mature, adaptable, and organised.

Placement year

When you arrive at Essex, you can decide whether you would like to combine your course with a placement year. You will be responsible for finding your placement, but with support and guidance provided by both your department and the placements team. If you complete a placement year you’ll only pay 20% of your usual tuition fee to Essex for that year.

Our expert staff

Our staff are among world leaders in their field, and our enthusiasm for our subject is infectious. Our flexible course is combined with a supportive structure which helps you to pursue the modules best-suited to your interests. We take the time to get to know you as an individual, welcome you into our scholarly community, and value your views.

Specialist facilities

By studying within our Essex Pathways Department for your foundation year, you will have access to all of the facilities that the University of Essex has to offer, as well as those provided by our department to support you:

• We provide computer labs for internet research; classrooms with access to PowerPoint facilities for student presentations; AV facilities for teaching and access to web-based learning materials
• Our new Student Services Hub will support you and provide information for all your needs as a student
• Our social space is stocked with magazines and newspapers, and provides an informal setting to meet with your lecturers, tutors and friends

Our Department of History also offers excellent on-campus facilities:

• We have several Special Collections in history, including the Essex Society for Archaeology and History Library, the Harsnett Collection, the Hervey Benham Oral History Sound Archive, the Bensusan Collection, and the Colchester Medical Society Library
• Access the UK Data Archive, a national service provider digital resources for historians, which is particularly strong in nineteenth and twentieth-century economic and social history
• Attend an exciting programme of events

Your future

In addition to the opportunity to learn about the past and come to a better understanding of the present, a course in history also provides you with important skills that will be of value after leaving university. You learn to absorb, analyse and assess a wide variety of information and viewpoints, to express your arguments in oral and written form, and to think and work both independently and in co-operation with others.

You therefore graduate prepared for a wide range of careers. Our graduates have gone on to have careers in a wide variety of fields including:

• teaching
• librarianship
• museum and archive services
• the Civil Service
• local government
• law enforcement
• charity administration

Others have proceeded to work in banking, industrial and retail management, media research, electronic publishing, marketing, IT, health service administration, counselling and social work, while others still have chosen to enhance their career opportunities by studying for MA or PhD degrees.

Some of our recent graduates have found employment as:

• a warden for the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle
• a planning support officer for a local council
• a senior underwriting assistant at CNA Insurance Company Limited
• a researcher at the House of Commons
• a graduate trainee for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew
• a library assistant for the University of Cambridge

We also work with the university’s Student Development Team to help you find out about further work experience, internships, placements, and voluntary opportunities.

Teaching

• Your teaching mainly takes the form of lectures and classes, the latter involving about 20 students
• A typical timetable includes a one-hour lecture and a one-hour class for each of your four modules every week
• Any language classes involve language laboratory sessions
• Our classes are run in small groups, so you receive a lot of individual attention

Assessment

• Your assessed coursework will generally consist of essays, reports, in-class tests, book reviews, individual or group oral presentations, and small scale research projects