Film & TV and History

Studying film and television alongside history gives you two complementary ways of understanding how the world works and how it has been recorded, interpreted, and shaped over time. Film and television studies examines moving image media as cultural artefacts, exploring how meaning is constructed through editing, cinematography, sound, and narrative, and how the industry that produces these texts is organised and has evolved. History, meanwhile, develops your capacity for evidence-based argument, asking you to weigh sources critically, understand context, and construct sustained accounts of the past.

Together these disciplines produce graduates who are both analytically sharp and culturally fluent.

At Nottingham Trent University, this three-year full-time programme allows you to explore both subjects in depth across the duration of your degree. You will examine a wide range of film and television texts, from documentary and drama to genre cinema and broadcast journalism, developing the critical vocabulary to analyse them rigorously. Your history studies will take you across periods and places, developing research skills and the ability to synthesise complex material into clear, well-argued writing.

The course includes a sandwich year and a work placement, meaning you will spend structured time in a professional environment, which is particularly valuable for a degree that opens doors across the creative, heritage, and media sectors.

Graduates from this kind of combined programme go on to a wide range of careers. Some move into the screen industries, working in production, post-production, broadcasting, journalism, or media management. Others pursue roles in museums, archives, heritage organisations, or education.

The writing, research, and critical thinking skills developed across both disciplines are also highly transferable to fields such as publishing, public affairs, marketing, and the civil service. Postgraduate study in film, media, history, or education is a natural progression for those who wish to deepen their expertise.