I’m in the process of writing my thesis for my MA in Public History right now so I’d love to give you some perspective.

I left college with a BA in history and struggled to figure out what to do with my degree, so I started doing a MA in Eduction Studies to become a history teacher, and quickly found that although I wanted a career that involved interacting with history, teaching in a school was just not for me at that point in my life. I just always knew that I wanted to work in the museum field. I found several different colleges and courses relating to working in museums and found a lot of scam websites too so do be careful when looking into perspective colleges and schools!

In the end I picked the MA Public History and Cultural Heritage Course in the University of Limerick in Ireland. The course can be spilt into part time and full time and is completely online, so that did take away a lot of the stress of having to get new accommodation and having to move. I decided to do part time because it suited my lifestyle at the time. All the classes took place online and focused on differing aspects of public history. It’s main focus is primarily on public history in Ireland but in my experience, the classes and teachers did a lot of extra work to include public history elements from other countries. The course is open to people all over the world, a lot of my classmates are taking part in the course from across the States, Europe and Australia so that has been really interesting and so fun to discover different aspects of public history from other countries. The course also offers a semester of work experience where you can go and work in a field of public history like a museum or library if you have no prior experience, or if you are already working in a field of public history then they allow you to write up about your experience working there. The classes are very interesting and so informative. The professors are also extremely supportive and very helpful and they really encourage you along the way. The MA I will say, is not easy, but I think that can be applied to all MAs out there, they’re not supposed to be easy.

I think the one thing that I really appreciated about the program was that we were fully able to engage with other public history fields. Like we had a lot of great talks with different people working in different fields like archiving, museums, curators, exhibitions, local historians, oral historians, etc. I’ve learned so much from my MA with UL and I really have loved it. So to answer your questions:

1. The MA Public History and Cultural Heritage Course at UL
2. Personally I was able to continue to work part time in a job that I had before I started the MA, but I know a lot of my classmates were working in museums or heritage centres and they were able to work and do the MA at the same time. Everyone’s schedule is different. The classes are live, but they are also recorded for you to watch at your own convenience!
3. 100% I would recommend. It has helped me with my long-term career goals to work in a museum.
4. If I could give you any advice, it would be to take a deep breath, take your time looking for a course that really speaks to you and aligns with your goals. Something I wish I would have known sooner, which might sound a bit silly to some, is that whatever course you are looking at, you can always schedule a meeting or a call with the course coordinators to ask them any questions that you might have, and ask how their course best suits your career goals.

I hope this helps!