LSE-NUS Double Degree MA Asian and International History

This new and exciting two-year programme is taught by the National University of Singapore and the London School of Economics. It’s designed for students interested in studying Asia from an international perspective. The programme is also well-suited for those interested in decentering international history by studying it from an Asian perspective.

During your first year at NUS, you’ll be introduced to a wide range of contemporary historical methods, focusing on major historians, current debates about historical practice, theoretical history, and historical interpretation.

This is complemented by a choice of electives covering modern Southeast Asia, Singapore, modern East Asia, China, America, and modern Europe. You’ll also study topics like imperialism and empire, the Cold War, military history, cultural history, and oral history.

In your second year at LSE, you can choose from a wide selection of International History courses ranging from the Ottoman Empire to twentieth-century Southeast Asia. Thematically, courses cover everything from war and peace, to the history of race and gender. While you’ll have the option to study European, North American, South American, and African History, this degree allows you to centre your studies on Asian history in all its rich variety.

These Asian history courses can be further complemented by specialist options on Asia from the Departments of Economic History, Government, Anthropology, and Geography.

Throughout the programme, you’ll engage with the latest academic research in the field, and you’ll undertake your own research-based term papers and third term dissertation. The dissertation is one of the highlights of this degree, where you’ll pursue specialist research on a subject with an Asian focus under the supervision of a leading expert in the field.

Previous graduates of this double degree have gone on to work in academia and research, education and teaching, and the public sector in the UK or abroad. Others work for international organisations and NGOs, charities, as well as a wide range of other sectors, including journalism and media.

General reading

• Antony Best, Jussi Hanhimaki, Joe Maiolo, and Kirsten Schulze, International History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Routledge, 2014 3rd edition)
• Kristina Spohr, Post Wall, Post Square, How Bush, Gorbachev, Kohl, and Deng Shaped the World after 1989 (YUP, 2020)
• O. A. Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (2011)
• Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century (1999)

Subject specific recommendations

• Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World (2015)
• Elizabeth Economy, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State (2019)
• Sunil S. Amrith, Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons have shaped South Asia’s History (Penguin 2018)
• Sunil S. Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants (Harvard University Press, 2015)
• Antony Reid, A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015)
• M.C. Rikleffs (et al), A New History of Southeast Asia (Red Globe Press, 2010)
• C. Tsuzuki, The Pursuit of Power in Modern Japan 1825-1995 (Oxford, 2000)
• K.W. Larsen, Tradition, Treaties, and Trade: Qing Imperialism and Choson Korea, 1850-1910 (Cambridge, MA, 2008)
• Frederick W. Mote, Imperial China, 900-1800 (Harvard University Press, 1999).
• Frederic Wakeman, Jr. The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China (University of California Press, 1985).
• J.D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (3rd edition, New York, 2013)
• CHEN Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War (University of North Carolina Press, 2001)
• Tongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1994)
• Christopher Goscha, Vietnam: A New History (Basic Books, 2016)