Magna Carta Anniversary Celebrated with MOOC

Next year commemorates the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta and events are already being planned, including an exhibit at the British Library that we previously profiled on this blog. Of course, most commemorative events require the attendee to live near a major institution hosting an exhibition.  To help spread the celebrations further afield, the academics at Royal Holloway - a college of the University of London - are hosting a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) about the Magna Carta that anyone around the world can enroll in.

"We are home to some of the world's experts on Magna Carta in its thirteenth century context and on its reinterpretation and reinvigoration in the seventeenth century, so we're invested in making the commemorations of the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta as successful as possible," wrote Emm Barnes Johnstone, a historian of medicine at Royal Holloway.

The free six week course will examine why the Magna Carta was radical in its day, why it has been the subject of numerous debates, and why it remains important and relevant today.  Interested people can find out more and sign up for the course entitled "The Magna Carta and Its Legacy" online at Coursera.