We are concerned with the local and the global, and teach and write about everything from households and communities in Essex to witchcraft in Germany, from the history of disease to the culture of death, from shopping to sex, from the censorship of theatres to state surveillance, from slaves in the Americas to aristocrats in France, from atrocities in Ireland to martial arts in Brazil, from oil to food, from revolutions in England, China and Russia to the struggle for racial equality in South Africa and the United States.
In addition to our BA in History, we offer a range of undergraduate degrees that reflect our strengths in modern and early modern history; Britain and Europe; the US and Latin America; social and cultural history; and film history. Our postgraduate degrees include MAs and Diplomas in social and cultural history; local and regional history; gender, class and race; and war, experience and memory. Our PhD students are undertaking research on topics ranging from gender in early modern England, to nineteenth-century household accidents, to the representation of superheroes in twentieth-century America. The Department also offers a variety of Local History courses.
Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) results 2008: The Department of History is placed second in the UK, behind only Imperial College London in the national RAE. This is an accolade for the ground-breaking research that is done in the Department. 35 per cent of our research was ranked as ‘world-leading’ and a further 35 per cent as ‘internationally excellent’.
Consistently high student satisfaction ratings: Recent National Student Surveys found that History students at Essex were overall satisfied with the quality of their course (95% in 2010; 94% in 2011) and teaching (97% in 2011) : well above the national average – see Unistats).
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