Course overview

BA History BA History and Economics BA History and Politics BA Ancient and Modern History BA History and Modern Languages

Typical intake: 9

Oxford’s History course provides a distinctive education by developing an awareness of the differing political, cultural, social and economic structures within past societies and how they interrelate.

A large part of tuition is provided by the tutors inside the College but undergraduates will have the opportunity of working with tutors in other colleges from their first year when they are working on their Optional Subjects, General History, and Further and Special Subjects, in the selection of which they are given the widest choice. The tutors normally organise a field trip for Historians in their second year as a part of the course. Grants are available for those wishing to travel abroad in the vacations and to attend language courses.

Tutors

Harry Pitt Fellow & Tutor in Modern History & Senior Treasurer of Amalgamated Clubs

Professor Bob Harris

Professor Bob Harris

Harry Pitt Fellow & Tutor in Modern History & Senior Treasurer of Amalgamated Clubs

Professor of British History

Education

BA (Durham), MA DPhil (Oxford)

I joined Oxford in 2006, having spent 13 years at the University of Dundee where I held a personal chair in British history.

Lightbody Fellow & Tutor in History & Student Financial Aid Officer

Dr Conrad Leyser

Dr Conrad Leyser

Lightbody Fellow & Tutor in History & Student Financial Aid Officer

Clarendon Associate Professor of History

Deputy Dean of Degrees

Education

MA DPhil (Oxford)

I work on the religious and social history of western Europe and North Africa, from the fall of Rome to the rise of Latin Christendom after the first millennium. I have studied the problem of moral authority in the post-Roman West. My current project traces the relationship between institutional identity and cultural memory across the late ancient and early medieval period.  In a study entitled The Myth of the Church, I plan to follow the development–slow and late–of a professional, celibate clerical hierarchy.

My immediate interests are in proposing a new view of the tenth-century Church. I am testing the hypothesis that this was an era in which bishops took advantage of the confusion occasioned by the end of the Carolingian Empire to achieve an unprecedented degree of institutional autonomy and self-definition. By marshalling (and sometimes actively forging) the authority of the early Church, late ninth- and tenth-century clerics succeeded in making of the episcopacy a career, with its own code of conduct, and the possibility of advancement.

Headshot of Josephine Crawley Quinn

Martin Frederiksen Fellow & Tutor in Ancient History

Professor Josephine Crawley Quinn

Headshot of Josephine Crawley Quinn

Professor Josephine Crawley Quinn

Martin Frederiksen Fellow & Tutor in Ancient History

Professor of Ancient History

Education

MA (Oxford), MA PhD (California)

I work on Mediterranean history and archaeology, with particular interests in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, the Phoenicians, and ancient North Africa. I’ve published articles on topics from Roman imperialism to Athenian sculpture to Numidian architecture to Edwardian education, and I’ve co-edited volumes of essays on ‘The Hellenistic West’ (with Jonathan Prag) and ‘The Punic Mediterranean’ (with Nicholas Vella), as well as the collected articles of the late Peter Derow (with Andrew Erskine). My most recent book, In Search of the Phoenicians, was published by Princeton University Press in January 2018. My next book, How the World Made the West, will be published by Bloomsbury in February 2024.

Headshot of Alexandra Gajda

College Lecturer in History

Dr Alexandra Gajda

Headshot of Alexandra Gajda

Dr Alexandra Gajda FSA FRHistS

College Lecturer in History

Associate Professor of History

John Walsh Fellow in History, Jesus College

Education

BA MA DPhil (Oxford)

I am a scholar of the political, religious and intellectual life of sixteenth and early seventeenth-century England. My first monograph explored the interface between politics and ideas in sixteenth-century England by examining the impact of the career of Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex on late Elizabethan political culture. My current research is centred on the relationship between the religious and constitutional history of the Reformation in the British Isles: I am writing a history of Parliament and the Reformation in sixteenth century England and Wales, and various articles on the relationship of church and state in the sixteenth century.

My research also focuses on early modern historiography and historical thought, and I am engaged in a series of studies of William Camden’s Annals of the Reign of Elizabeth I, the first history of Queen Elizabeth, which continues to shape the narrative of the Queen’s reign to this day. With Henry Woudhuysen, I am editing the letters of the poet and statesman Fulke Greville for the forthcoming edition of Greville’s Complete Works for OUP.

Applying

The History tutors welcome applications both before and after A-level. Applicants to read History need not have studied any particular period of history. We are seeking candidates who show an enthusiasm for their subject, who can analyse their material intelligently, argue cogently and clearly, and can write lucidly and succinctly. Although there is no language requirement, tutors are keen to encourage historians to acquire or maintain a good working knowledge of at least one modern or ancient language and every assistance will be given to those wishing to work up or improve their language abilities.

Read more on the university website Faculty of History