The breadth of expertise and experience in the History Department (currently forty or so full-time members of staff), along with a thriving culture of research, seminars and conferences, make Warwick one of the very best universities in the UK to undertake research in history. Our Department achieved a 93% overall satisfaction result in the 2021 Postgraduate Research Experience Survey.
PhD students normally complete their degrees within three to four years of full-time study, or five to six years part-time. As a research student, your closest contact will be with your supervisor, or supervisors, who will meet with you regularly to discuss your work, and agree a programme of reading, research and writing with you.
Additional support and training are provided by the Department, Arts Faculty and the Graduate School, as well as by History’s many reading groups, seminars, workshops and conferences. History researchers will benefit from the University Library’s new Research Exchange, a dedicated postgraduate conference and study area, with state-of-the-art facilities.
Our research
The Department of History at Warwick has particular strengths in the history of the early modern and modern periods. Our Faculty have expertise in subjects across the world, and a number of specialist Research CentresLink opens in a new window facilitating new research by students and scholars.
You can search our academic staff by their areas of expertiseLink opens in a new window.
Warwick’s History Department features a host of exceptional historians and has an outstanding national and international reputation.
Our historians highlight global and innovative perspectives on traditional themes and share an enthusiasm for history beyond the confines of academia. Their research and teaching reflects a cutting-edge take on established historical fields and ideas. They are prepared to take an unconventional view. This willingness to look beyond the traditional boundaries of the discipline makes for a distinctive learning environment at Warwick.
The Department has an outstanding reputation as pioneering practitioners of social, cultural, early modern, European, Latin American and medical history, and has more recently been at the forefront of developing the methodologies of the new global history. Inspired by an expansive and inclusive vision of historical research, our historians' work is multi-disciplinary and draws on environmental, literary, visual and material sources spanning the globe across five centuries.
The Department’s commitment to supporting research that is internationally field-leading, innovative, and engaged is underpinned by the belief that understanding the past helps to shape the present and the future.
Research within the Department is underpinned by three key guiding principles: rendering visible people, objects, themes, institutions and processes whose histories have been neglected, misunderstood or under-valued; achieving engagement and impact for our findings, within academia, museums and archives and beyond; and internationalism, in terms of the scope of research, the composition of the Department, and our approach to collaboration.
If you are intellectually curious, and prepared for your investigations to take you into unexpected territories, you will be at home in Warwick’s Department of History.
