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, postgraduate taught or postgraduate research level. Here’s an overview of what we offer with links for full details of each programme, including leaflets with contact details for your queries.

Our BA (Hons) in Heritage and Tourism is the perfect place to start your academic study and professional journey if you are planning a career in heritage, travel or tourism. It combines the applied business and tourism-specific skills of Forth Valley College's HND programme with the advanced skills in history and heritage at the University of Stirling. Aside from pursuing careers in the heritage and tourism sectors, our graduates have also gone on to study postgraduate degrees in heritage and other related fields of study.

Heritage and tourism field trip

 

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. This is an excellent training for a career in heritage and museums, and of course further research. We offer two specialised pathways:

  • Cultural Heritage Studies
  • Digital Heritage

You can also opt to take the broad programme without specialisation.

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We also offer a PhD Heritage, so please get in contact with us to discuss your ideas. Individual staff profiles will give you a good sense of our research interests. Recent and current PhD topics include:

  • Wrestling with social value: methods and approaches for heritage conservation
  • Nacken Chaetrie (Gypsy/Traveller objects) in Scottish museums
  • Understandings of natural heritage in the Scottish Highlands: overcoming nature/culture dichotomies
  • Future proofing the heritage value of the Commonwealth Games Scotland Archive and associated cultural memories of Team Scotland
  • Materialising the Cold War in Scotland
  • Investigating sustainable and creative futures for heritage organisations with social purpose
  • Sandstone heritages
  • Conserving World Heritage in climate-change(d) futures
  • Excavation legacies and the resilience of archaeological sites to environmental change
  • Cultural and physical factors in the history and development of traditional external wall coatings in Scotland

Environmental History has also long been one of Stirling’s strengths, with specialised modules available to undergraduates. 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
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We also offer a LLM Environmental Law and Climate Justice, reflecting Stirling’s interest in 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.

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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.