History and Philosophy

History and philosophy are disciplines that have always existed in close conversation with each other, and studying them together at the University of Warwick gives you a particularly rich set of tools for understanding how human beings have thought about themselves and their world across time. History teaches you to engage with the past through evidence, to understand change and continuity and to situate ideas and events within their specific contexts. Philosophy teaches you to think with unusual care and precision about the most fundamental questions, including what knowledge is, how we should act and what it means for something to be true.

Together they develop both the contextual sensitivity and the analytical rigour that neither discipline quite produces alone.

At Warwick this three-year programme benefits from two departments with strong research reputations, and you will engage with historians and philosophers who are working at the frontiers of their fields. You will study the history of philosophy alongside empirical historical inquiry, learning to trace how philosophical ideas have been shaped by the social and intellectual contexts in which they emerged and how historical understanding is itself shaped by philosophical assumptions about knowledge and evidence. A year abroad is built into the programme, giving you the opportunity to encounter different intellectual traditions and to see your own formation from a greater distance.

Graduates of history and philosophy find their skills are valued across an exceptionally wide range of careers. Law, the civil service, policy analysis, journalism, teaching, academic research, management consultancy and the charitable sector are among the most common destinations. The combination of critical thinking, evidential reasoning and the ability to construct and evaluate complex arguments is precisely what many employers say they want from graduates but find hard to source.

Many graduates go on to postgraduate study in history, philosophy, law, politics or related fields.