Global Heritage Management MA

Year of entry: 2026

MA: 12 Months Full-Time

Heritage is a living process. Environmental, cultural and technological changes continually challenge us to reinterpret our history and culture.

MA Global Heritage Management examines the theory and practice of heritage making, management and use in local, national and international contexts. Our teaching staff in the Institute for Cultural Practices are academic experts with professional backgrounds in the field.

As a student on the course, you'll have opportunities to examine key contemporary themes in Heritage, like sustainability and decolonisation. You’ll also be able to gain intensive work experience and take critical reflective practice within a range of heritage organisations across the region and further afield through our long-standing placement scheme.

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Benefit from access to the University’s cultural heritage assets, such as Manchester Museum, the John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre, and teaching from staff across the Institute for Cultural Practices, whose expertise spans topics like creative and cultural indutries, arts management and museum studies.

This MA consists of taught units and a dissertation, with options for a work placement and professional practice project. Taught units cover topics including:

Heritage Tourism
Curating and engagement
Decolonising museums and heritage
Heritage and sustainable development
Intangible cultural heritage
Creative learning in the cultural sector
Strategic planning and management of heritage projects and enterprises

These are example course units based on 2025/26 options and are subject to change each year.

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Where will your degree take you?

Progression opportunities include work in heritage policy and management roles for national and international organisations, such as the Heritage Lottery, Historic England, the National Trust, and UNESCO.

Other roles within museums and heritage organisations include fundraising and development, research and consultancy, visitor service management, community learning and engagement, collections management and site management.

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Dr Jenna Ashton

Co-Director of Global Heritage Management

Dr Jenna Ashton is an experienced curator and producer, working in the areas of heritage, arts, communities participation, public space, ecologies and story-telling.

She is passionate about embedding inclusive practices and co-production methods in the arts and heritage sectors. Jenna is also the Founder and Creative Director of Digital Women's Archive North – a Manchester-based arts and heritage organisation addressing social inequalities through creative archiving and documentation.

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Dr Catherine Roberts

Co-Director of Global Heritage Management

Catherine is a lecturer across programmes in the Institute for Cultural Practices. She has a MA in English Literary Culture and a PhD in Tourism Studies from the University of Central Lancashire.

A practitioner in regional and national museum learning programmes for over 15 years, Catherine has undertaken project consultancy for UK and European heritage and education projects. Her research interests and practice relate to experiential learning, place identity and psychoanlytical approaches to visitor experience in dissonant/difficult heritage and tourism environments.

Chloe Hesford

Heritage Studies Graduate

''I really enjoyed the way this course introduces you to the most interesting discourse, concepts and priorities within the cultural heritage sector right now. I also valued the range of backgrounds within the teaching staff which enabled me to pick a dissertation topic I was interested in and related to the career path I hoped to pursue.

Since completing my masters, I have had some really exciting roles and believe having this qualification greatly helped me to get a foot in the door by securing an entry level position in the sector with local government. In this role I used my knowledge of local cultural development and placemaking initiatives to support delivery of Arts Council funded projects.

I also had a role at the British Council working internationally to protect tangible and intangible heritage from conflict and climate change, putting knowledge of sustainable development, international cultural relations and different concepts of heritage into practice. I now work on cultural property policy at DCMS engaging with restitution and illicit trafficking. Completing my masters has massively shaped my career trajectory and the array of exciting areas of the heritage sector I have engaged with so far.''

Keying Zhang

Heritage Studies Graduate

''Before I started my post-graduate study, I was originally interested in Chinese history and culture. I thought that being a student of management, gaining knowledge about heritage could help me to develop a career in heritage management and promote Chinese culture.

It was during my study life in Manchester when I realised that my love towards Chinese heritage expanded to the love towards global heritage. I learned about how people cherished and protected their own heritage and how to deal with others heritage with respect from our lectures, our reading materials and also from talking to my classmates from a variety of origins.

I also spent about four months doing an internship in Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race archive. It was quite heavy to look through documents recording topics like racial discrimination, domestic violence and poverty, but day by day I became more convinced that we need to face these problems so that we can manage to tackle them.

Now I have travelled back to Beijing, China and work for programs about international cultural promotion, both welcoming foreigners to come and explore China and sending Chinese craftsman to attend showcase events in other countries.''

Mike Wynne

Heritage Studies Graduate

''Within the scope of my modules, I was free to study whatever I was interested in. The teaching gave an academic grounding that I was able to apply to my own areas of interest.

I was able to set my own essay titles and conduct research to answer my own questions rather than questions that had been set for me. I really enjoyed the seminar work: being able to discuss subjects with my peers, as well as staff, was very useful in expanding my horizons.

Also, the areas I chose to study and my focus on places led me to conduct extensive field work. For my dissertation I visited several nuclear bunkers around the UK to critique them using skills I had learned in my taught modules."