Study at the Centre of Environment, Heritage and Policy
We welcome you to study with us on one of our exciting programmes, whether at undergraduate, taught postgraduate or postgraduate research (PhD) level. Here is an overview of what we offer with links for full details of each programme.
BA (Hons) History and Heritage
Why are some aspects of the past celebrated and others removed or destroyed? What and who shapes our understanding of the past? How does the past inform our identities, politics, and sense of belonging today? This distinctive, exciting degree gives you a framework for understanding the past's role in the contemporary world and the part that heritage plays in shaping our collective futures.
Students gain in-depth historical knowledge and understanding of a range of periods, with modules focusing on the social, political, and environmental history of Europe, Africa and North America. Alongside this, modules on heritage and museums, provide students with a knowledge of heritage protection, museum collecting, heritage and identity, cultural politics, globalisation and decolonisation. The course allows students to master a range of academic and practical skills. With its emphasis on employability and career development, successful graduates will be well-placed to pursue a career supporting the inclusive, sustainable development of the heritage and museum sectors, amongst others.
MSc Heritage
Our MSc Heritage, revamped in 2020/21, offers state-of-the-art, critically informed, interdisciplinary education in heritage and its place in society, including its conservation, management and interpretation. The course introduces students to critical perspectives, conceptual debates, and practical issues relating to the nature of heritage. Learning is enhanced through case-studies, fieldtrips, and input from guest speakers, including heritage professionals with insight on ‘real world’ challenges and opportunities. Students have the exciting opportunity to do their own independent project through a dissertation and are supported to develop their research skills. The MSc is an excellent training for a career in heritage, museums and related sectors, and of course further research.
MSc Global Environmental Sustainability
This exciting new course will be available for full-time and part-time entry in 2026. As part of our leading research in environmental change, we want to train global environmental leaders. This Masters course will look at global environmental sustainability from an international politics, law, and natural science perspective.
MSc in International Conflict and Cooperation
Our MSc in International Conflict and Cooperation has a strong focus on questions of environmental and climate conflict, security and cooperation. After a general introduction, you can choose from a range of relevant courses on Climate Justice, Human Rights and Climate Change, Resource Conflicts and Development and Security. We offer an optional field trip to the United Nations and other organisations, like the UN Environment (UNEP) and Development Programmes (UNDP) in Geneva, where you learn how to interact with the world of global environmental governance and decision making.
Study for a PhD
We offer a PhD Heritage, so please follow the link to find out more and then get in contact with us to discuss your ideas. Most of the projects are interdisciplinary in nature and supervised from staff across a range of disciplines. Individual staff profiles will give you a good sense of our research interests and areas of expertise.
Recent and current PhD topics include:
- What the land remembers: an investigation of ecomemory in Polish Galicia.
- Everyday heritage-making practices amongst immigrant communities in Delhi.
- Heritage as a key driver for community disaster resilience? A study of the Scottish coastline in times of crisis.
- Heritage, Planning and Place: New Futures for Participatory, Creative Place-Making.
- Understandings of natural heritage in the Scottish Highlands: overcoming nature/culture dichotomies.
- Probing beneath the surface: hidden stories, values and lives of Trinity House and its object collection.
- Wrestling with social value: methods and approaches for heritage conservation.
- Investigating sustainable and creative futures for heritage organisations with social purpose.
- Thermal retrofitting for built heritage in Scotland: Managing change, negotiating values, overcoming barriers.
- Reframing building conservation: examining relationships between materialities, communities and values.
- Nacken Chaetrie (Gypsy/Traveller objects) in Scottish museums.
- Materialising the Cold War in Scotland.
- Conserving World Heritage in climate-change(d) futures.
- Cultural and physical factors in the history and development of traditional external wall coatings in Scotland.
In International Politics, we currently supervise a range of environment-related projects under the PhD Politics, including in the research cluster on Environmental Justice and Low Carbon Transitions. Most of these are interdisciplinary projects co-supervised with colleagues in History, Law, the Management School and Biological and Environmental Sciences.
- Water in conflict in the Middle East: weapon or peacemaker?
- Inside and Outside of the International Climate Negotiations: A Comparison Between Radical and Moderate Climate Justice Movements.
- Groundwater, Energy and Kurdish Politics in the Tigris and Euphrates Basins Southeastern Anatolian Project (GAP).
- Green extractivism, neo-liberal developmentalism, and state power: Lithium mining in Zimbabwe
Environmental History is also one of Stirling’s strengths. We offer an MRes Historical Research with an Environmental History strand, which offers an excellent foundation for a PhD History. Recent and current Environmental History PhD topics include:
- Landscapes of perception: reclaiming the Athabasca Oil Sands and the Sydney Tar Pond.
- The pursuit of the ‘good forest’ in colonial Kenya.
- The nature of British mapping of West Africa, 1749-1841.
- Sustainable renewable energy – the emergence and continuing development of hydropower in Scotland.
- The medieval Scottish park: a new approach of the study of a complex human landscape.
- Fish trade in medieval North Atlantic societies: an interdisciplinary approach to human ecodynamics.
- Investigating the carbon store of anthropogenically deepened urban soils in Scotland.
More study opportunities
We also offer a LLM/MSc in International Energy and Environmental Law, reflecting Stirling’s interest in energy, the environment and climate change. Expert staff provide you with an in-depth understanding of international energy and environmental law, as well as of key areas of energy management, environmental policy and economics.
Alongside our regular teaching, our postgraduate and undergraduate students attend the Centre’s vibrant programme of seminars and other ad hoc events. This means that students are fully integrated into our exciting research culture, furthering our interdisciplinary thinking and working.
Our teaching also benefits from strong links with the University Art Collection. Its dynamic curators teach on our BA (Hons) Heritage and Tourism. They also offer students volunteer opportunities and input to the exhibition schedule.