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History and English Language BA(Hons)

2025-26

Start date

22 September 2025

Duration

3 years full-time
4 years inc. placement year

Entry requirements

A Level - BBB-BCC

BTEC - DMM-MMM

See full entry requirements

Places available (subject to change)

20

About the course

Reasons to study

  1. With the chance to choose from a list of specialist option modules, you can tailor your studies to your interests and career goals.
  2. Like past graduates, you could go on to secure a career within teaching, writing, local government, archives, the media, and PR, to name a few.
  3. You can gain valuable, real-world experience and insight into your future career by undertaking a relevant work placement. 

If you enjoy learning about the past and you’re also fascinated by language and how it shapes the world around us, this History and English Language BA(Hons) course is for you.

During your studies, you’ll cover a broad range of topics, enabling you to explore medieval and modern history, while also specialising within English language and linguistics.

You’ll be introduced to the basic concepts and theories of linguistics, and we’ll encourage you to study the role of language in society and how it helps humans understand things. You’ll look at how we acquire language, how it changes and evolves, and how it forms such an array of ways to communicate.

We’ll carry out conversation analysis, sociolinguistics, and stylistics to get under the surface of the spoken or written word.

Why study History and English Language BA(Hons)

On this course, you’ll develop skills including management, communication, analytical, research, problem-solving and planning. You’ll also have the chance to:

  • Choose option modules to focus on the topics that interest you the most.
  • Gain valuable, real-world experience via work experience in year 2 that’s designed to enhance your skills ready for employment.
  • Take part in innovative assessments, such as analysing children’s speech development.
  • Pitch your ideas; past students had the chance to put forward ideas for a historical video game and created a visitor trail for a national museum.
  • Learn from state-of-the-art facilities, including a forensic linguistics lab, a research and resource centre, and conference labs.

You can be sure a course like this will more than pique your interests and your passions, too; History at Huddersfield is top in Yorkshire for Learning Opportunities, scoring 96%, based on experimental statistics from the National Student Survey 2023.

Following your degree, you could pursue a diverse range of career opportunities, including – like past students* – in teaching, writing, archives, or PR. You could decide to pursue further English and history study, focusing on linguistics, or early modern, medieval or modern history.

*Source: LinkedIn

Course detail

Core modules:

The Past in the Present: An Introduction to Public History

This module will introduce you to the place of history in the public sphere. Utilising a range of case studies, it will help you understand and critically analyse how the past is produced and presented in a range of places that include museums, the media and online. With input from academics and those involved in the creation and curation of public history, this module will also help you develop your communication and employability skills.

Writing the Past

This module explores the history of English language and literature from c. 700 to c. 1700. It will examine the social, stylistic, political, cultural and economic circumstances within which certain key texts were written as well as their literary and linguistic features. This module will consider the status of literary texts not only as evidence for the development of genres and literary forms, but also as forms of historical and linguistic evidence. You will explore a range of evidence including material culture and visual representations alongside written sources including poetry, prose, and drama.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking enables us to go beyond the surface of information, using analytical skills to dissect, question, and evaluate ideas with a detective's curiosity and a scientist's precision. The module will hone your intellectual skills in reasoning and close analysis, improve your ability to present arguments effectively, and equip you to plan and conduct an independent research project. This module will also provide support for planning your personal and career development.

Introduction to English Language

This module introduces students to the study of the English language. Students will explore primarily descriptive and some theoretical approaches to the English language and be introduced to a range of sub-disciplinary areas in the field of language study like phonology, phonetics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics. The module focuses on the establishing core linguistic concepts relevant to the study of English and building the practical skills necessary to analyse language structure and interpret English language data. The module will familiarize students with a wide range of terminology, concepts, approaches, methods of analysis and key scholars.

Entry requirements

BBB-BCCat A Level .

120-104 UCAS tariff points from a combination of Level 3 qualifications.

Merit at T Level.

DMM-MMM in BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma.

  • Access to Higher Education Diploma with 45 Level 3 credits at Merit or above.
  • 120-104 UCAS tariff points from International Baccalaureate qualifications.

​Applications from international students will be considered on an individual basis, and with advice from the University's International Office.

If your first language is not English, you will need to meet the minimum requirements of an English Language qualification. The minimum for IELTS is 6.5 overall with no element lower than 6.0, or equivalent. Read more about the University’s entry requirements for students outside of the UK on our International Entry Requirements page.

Other suitable experience or qualifications will be considered. For further information please see the University's minimum entry requirements.

Placements


The course offers a compulsory five-week work placement in Year 2. The course also offers an optional one-year (48 weeks) work placement after the second year. This will give you the opportunity to gain valuable hands-on experience, insight into your chosen career and open up your graduate employment prospects. Our Placement Unit and academic staff have excellent industry links and can support you in applying for and finding your placement(s), as well as during your placement year.

Recent graduates have taken placements at the Royal Armouries Museum, Wilsons Solicitors, Kirklees TV, West Yorkshire Archives Service, the Barclays Archive Group, Aviva Insurance, the National Media Museum and a number of primary and secondary schools.

A placement is a great opportunity to explore your chosen industry, to understand the sector, network and make valuable contacts, whilst developing your skills, knowledge and experience. A placement is a chance to get involved, to put theory into practice and to work alongside professionals.

Photo of Steph Bower, Placements officer for SAH

Stephanie Bower, Placements Officer

Our Department

Hear more from our staff and students.

Your Career


As an English Language and History graduate, you are valued for the advanced skills you have developed in analysis and communication, self-motivation, teamwork, creative problem solving and persuasiveness. Studying history alongside English allows you to keep your career options open.

Our graduates have gone on to a variety of careers within teaching, writing, local government, archives, the media, PR, law, politics and accountancy.

A selection of organisations that have employed Huddersfield graduates in recent years include BBC, Roma Publication, Emerald Group Publishing, House of Commons, the Civil Service, Royal Armouries Museum and British Red Cross. Others have opted for PGCE study and have become teachers, or continued their studies at Master's level.**

*Percentage of our undergraduate students from these subject areas go on to work and/or further study within fifteen months of graduating (HESA Graduate Outcomes 2019/20, UK domiciled, other activities excluded).

**Source: LinkedIn

80-95% Graduates employed*

Student support

At the University of Huddersfield, you'll find support networks and services to help you get ahead in your studies and social life. Whether you study at undergraduate or postgraduate level, you'll soon discover that you're never far away from our dedicated staff and resources to help you to navigate through your personal student journey. Find out more about all our support services.

Research excellence

Research plays an important role in informing all our teaching and learning activities. Through research our staff remain up-to-date with the latest developments in their field, which means you develop knowledge and skills that are current and highly relevant to industry.

100% of research produced by History at Huddersfield is internationally recognised, and two thirds of this is internationally excellent or world-leading; we more than doubled the amount of world-leading research we produced since the last REF. Our impact case studies scored particularly highly, being rated 20% world leading and 50% internationally excellent. - REF 2014

We extend our knowledge and understanding of History through the production of high quality work, with funding coming from the AHRC, ESRC, the Wellcome Institute, the Leverhulme Trust and other significant grant providers. As part of this process we have also invested in early career members of staff with great success.

History hosts the Research Centre for History, Culture and Memory (CHiCaM), a cross-disciplinary research centre which runs seminars and projects. CHiCaM is comprised of four research groups: Health Histories, Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture, Global and Transnational Histories and Feelings, Affects and Emotions. Current staff research includes: Richard III and the Princes in the Tower; the Emily Hobhouse Letters Project; Royal Masculinities 1485-1714; Healthcare Before Welfare States; the Political Thought of Hindu Nationalism and Conservatism; Children Deprived of their Liberty; Histories of Mental Ill-Health; and the Shape of Nursing (1880-2020).

For more information, see the Research section of our website.

Important information

Although we always try and ensure we deliver our courses as described, sometimes we may have to make changes for the following reasons

When you enrol as a student of the University, your study and time with us will be governed by our terms and conditions, Handbook of Regulations and associated policies. It is important that you familiarise yourself with these as you will be asked to agree to them when you join us as a student. You will find a guide to the key terms here, along with the Student Protection Plan.

Although we always try and ensure we deliver our courses as described, sometimes we may have to make changes for the following reasons

Changes to a course you have applied for but are not yet enrolled on

If we propose to make a major change to a course that you are holding an offer for, then we will tell you as soon as possible so that you can decide whether to withdraw your application prior to enrolment. We may occasionally have to withdraw a course you have applied for or combine your programme with another programme if we consider this reasonably necessary to ensure a good student experience, for example if there are not enough applicants. Where this is the case we will notify you as soon as reasonably possible and we will discuss with you other suitable courses we can transfer your application to. If you do not wish to transfer to another course with us, you may cancel your application and we will refund you any deposits or fees you have paid to us.

Changes to your course after you enrol as a student

Changes to option modules:

Where your course allows you to choose modules from a range of options, we will review these each year and change them to reflect the expertise of our staff, current trends in research and as a result of student feedback or demand for certain modules. We will always ensure that you have an equivalent range of options to that advertised for the course. We will let you know in good time the options available for you to choose for the following year.

Major changes:

We will only make major changes to non-optional modules on a course if it is necessary for us to do so and provided such changes are reasonable. A major change is a change that substantially changes the outcomes, or a significant part of your course, such as the nature of the award or a substantial change to module content, teaching days (part time provision), type of delivery or assessment of the core curriculum. For example, it may be necessary to make a major change to reflect changes in the law or the requirements of the University’s regulators or a commissioning or accrediting body. We may also make changes to improve the course in response to student, examiners’ or other course evaluators’ feedback or to ensure you are being taught current best practice. Major changes may also be necessary because of circumstances outside our reasonable control, such as a key member of staff leaving the University or being unable to teach, where they have a particular specialism that can’t be adequately covered by other members of staff; or due to damage or interruption to buildings, facilities or equipment, or pandemics.

Major changes would usually be made with effect from the next academic year, but may happen sooner in an emergency. We will notify you as soon as possible should we need to make a major change and will carry out suitable consultation. If you reasonably believe that the proposed change will cause you detriment or hardship we will, if appropriate, work with you to try to reduce the adverse effect on you or find an appropriate solution. Where an appropriate solution cannot be found and you contact us in writing before the change takes effect you can cancel your registration and withdraw from the University without liability to the University for future tuition fees. We will provide reasonable support to assist you with transferring to another university if you wish to do so.

In exceptional circumstances, we may, for reasons outside of our control, be forced to discontinue or suspend your course. Where this is the case, a formal exit strategy will be followed in accordance with the student protection plan.

The Office for Students (OfS) is the principal regulator for the University.

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