Intelligence History with Bletchley Park Studies – (M.A.)

Mindful of the huge contribution a study of Bletchley’s activities makes to British intelligence history, the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham (BUCSIS) is launching this new MA programme. It is the ‘twin’ of the highly successful MA in Security and Intelligence Studies (MA/SIS) set up in September 2008. BUCSIS currently has some thirty students on its books at MA, MPhil and DPhil levels, more than half coming from the USA, the Middle East, South Asia, Europe East and West, and Africa.

This programme has been designed for those interested in intelligence history and the history of the British intelligence model.

The new MA (MA/IHBPS) offers students a particular and specific insight into British intelligence history, linking the work of Bletchley Park and its code-breakers to the development of wireless and electronic interception and to a broader concern with the British intelligence model. Uniquely, the course takes an objective and balanced view of electronic intelligence during the Second World War, comparing and contrasting Allied and Axis organisations, their successes and failures. The Programme also studies the combination of electronic intelligence with such related activities and deception techniques, psychological warfare, espionage, human intelligence, and electronic warfare.

Half the learning on this MA will be physically based at Bletchley Park; it will exploit to the full not just the material resources held there but also the people who worked for it who include some figures with direct experience of this period of British intelligence history. Students will write a dissertation on a subject related to Bletchley Park or a broader intelligence history topic.

The aims of the programme are to:

* provide a particular and specific insight into British intelligence history, linking the work of Bletchley Park and its code-breakers to the development of wireless and electronic interception and to a broader concern with the British intelligence model.
* highlight the importance of Bletchley Park for the history of intelligence in the Second World War, and its outcomes and explaining how Bletchley Park’s successes lead to further advances in intelligence-led activity.
* show that Bletchley Park is an historical resource of major international significance.
* provide depth and nuance of study to stimulate individual research into Bletchley Park’s legacy.
* exploit wherever possible the testimony of those who worked at Bletchley Park.
* exploit the resources that Bletchley Park offers, in particular an examination of its machinery and its archival resources.
* relate the past use of interception to current intelligence-led security concerns with interception and surveillance.