History and Politics

History and politics are disciplines that need each other. Politics without historical understanding risks mistaking the contingent for the inevitable, while history without analytical frameworks drawn from political science can struggle to explain why events unfolded as they did. Studied together, they form an unusually powerful combination, one that trains you to see contemporary problems in deep context and to bring the conceptual rigour of social science to bear on evidence from the past.

At Oxford, this three-year full-time programme draws on the strengths of two distinguished faculties. You will engage with political theory from Plato to the present, with comparative politics and the study of political institutions across different states, and with the empirical analysis of political behaviour. Alongside this, you will study history at a level that emphasises original research, primary sources, and sustained written argument.

The degree encourages you to range across periods and geographies, and to develop your own perspective on what the past can and cannot tell us about the world we inhabit now. Tutorials are the central mode of teaching, demanding close reading, careful argument, and the ability to defend your ideas under intellectual pressure.

The formation this degree provides is exceptionally broad and deeply rigorous, and graduates move into an unusually wide range of careers. The civil service, politics, law, journalism, and international organisations all recruit heavily from history and politics graduates. The combination of analytical thinking, archival research skills, and the ability to construct and communicate persuasive arguments makes graduates effective in any role that involves understanding complexity and conveying ideas to different audiences.

Many graduates also continue into postgraduate study in political theory, international relations, history, or public policy, either in the UK or abroad.