Applications are open for 2027–28
London WC1B 3ES
UK
The MA in History and Critical Thinking (HCT) is a 12-month transdisciplinary research-intensive programme for students seeking to interrogate architecture through history, theory and criticism. It prepares students to examine how buildings, cities, spatial practices and their histories intersect with politics, environment, technologies, disciplinary and social structures. The programme’s aim is to produce and disseminate knowledge that connects contemporary issues with systematic historical enquiry, redefining what architecture is and what it means to write and teach history today.
At stake in the writing of history is a political engagement with the social, material, cultural, and environmental exigencies of the present. Architectural histories are sites of critical examination – for the ways they negotiate sources, construct evidence and perspectives; appropriate, augment and exclude voices; and shape our ways of thinking and making. At the HCT programme, students are encouraged to identify and explore marginalised voices and topics, untold and ongoing histories as well as to engage with recent scholarship, timely questions, methodologies and emerging forms of knowledge production.
The programme is organised around seminars with AA tutors and visiting critics, in critical writing workshops, and in public debates with guest speakers. Through these platforms, students expand their disciplinary knowledge and develop competencies in communication through exploring modalities of writing and publishing. Our curriculum is enriched by unique collaborations with world-renowned institutions and archives, including the AA Archives, Drawing Matter Collection, RIBA, the British Library, the Warburg Institute, the Le Corbusier Foundation, the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris and the OM Ungers Archive in Cologne.
At HCT, writing is approached as a pedagogical project, a practice of thinking, and a tool that transforms, articulates and demonstrates. Different genres of writing – from theses and academic essays to short experimental pieces, critical reviews, commentaries, book proposals and interviews – are explored through the year alongside drawings, photographs, films and literature. The relationships between the textual, the visual and the graphic are constantly negotiated.
A diversity of voices and expertise is brought into the programme through the annual HCT and PhD debates, workshops and open seminars. In previous academic years, the programme has organised sessions with international architects, historians, critics, curators, archivists, publishers, and educators including Mateja Kurir, Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Olga Touloumi, Elke Krasny, Gabu Heindl, Hilde Heynen, Esra Akcan, Dubravka Sekulić, Mark Dorrian, Léopold Lambert, Sven-Olov Wallenstein, and Kim Forster. This year’s HCT and PhD Debates series writing-with architecture and land will gather voices across architectural theory, criticism and environmental history.
This year the programme launches the HCT online journal, Across, publishing student research alongside invited contributions.
PhD pathway
HCT provides research facilities and supervision to research degree candidates (MPhil and PhD) registered under the AA’s PhD programme, a cross-disciplinary initiative supported by all the Taught Postgraduate programmes.
Career outcomes
HCT graduates pursue PhD programmes at leading institutions, contribute to architectural criticism and publishing, engage in university teaching and research as well as in architectural practice, museums and galleries.
Who should apply
Candidates with a strong interest in architecture and spatial practices, the history and politics of historiography, political ecology and feminism, colonial practices, the city and spatial justice; those with a background in the humanities or in practice seeking rigorous training in historical research and critical writing; and those preparing for doctoral work, curatorial roles, or careers in teaching, writing and developing a critically informed practice.
