New MA in Intelligence History with Bletchley Park Studies

This new programme will be launched in September 2010. It is the outcome of extensive collaboration between Bletchley Park and the University of Buckingham, conveniently located only a few miles away. Uniquely, it is offered in full partnership with Bletchley Park and enjoys the enthusiastic support of Simon Greenish, its innovative Director and his staff. (His work in recent years has ensured that Bletchley Park has become one of the world's most significant sites in intelligence history, with a strong educational outreach of which this MA will constitute a core part.)

Bletchley Park (or 'Station X') is known across the world as the place where Britain's code-breakers created the most valuable and productive source of intelligence in the Second World War. Thanks to Bletchley's historic achievement, its staff consistently provided vital intelligence to Britain's armed forces and its political leaders, making a major contribution to the defeat of Hitler's Third Reich, Fascist Italy, and Japan.

Bletchley Park built the foundations for all subsequent British interception and code-breaking activity during the long Cold War and is the direct antecedent of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham. Bletchley's output, usually if not wholly accurately referred to as Ultra, was derived from the interception and code-breaking of German 'Enigma' wireless traffic and transformed Britain’s fortunes after 1939. But Bletchley worked on other materials, including the far less well-known 'Lorenz' traffic which carried Hitler's orders to his top-level commanders as well as other codes and ciphers. Its communications analysis work is regarded as second to none.

The programme aims to:

• demonstrate the unique importance of Bletchley Park into the context of the history of intelligence in the Second      World War, and its outcomes, whilst at the same time identifying 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, which will serve not just to satisfy for the curiosity of postgraduates but to stimulate them to undertake their own research into Bletchley Park's legacy. The programme will show how Bletchley Park helped secure the idea and practice of democracy in the face of the Nazi onslaught, and will demonstrate the prime importance of keeping Bletchley Park intact as a present and future site of education and scholarship in intelligence studies

• weave into its narrative the testimony of those who worked at Bletchley Park allowing them to contribute to its learning missions whilst making solid use of the resources that Bletchley Park offers, in particular an examination of its machinery and its archival resources

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 which is 'twin' of its highly successful MA in Security and Intelligence Studies. Launched in 2008, it 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.

To find out more please visit The University of Buckingham