History with a Year Abroad

History at University College London is studied in one of the world's great research universities, in one of the world's most historically rich cities. The discipline is concerned with understanding the human past in all its complexity, recovering what happened, why it happened and what it means, and developing the critical skills to evaluate competing interpretations of events and processes that cannot be directly observed. This four-year full-time programme incorporates a year abroad, giving you the opportunity to study history in a different national academic tradition and to engage with archives and institutions in another country.

You will study a wide range of historical periods and geographies, developing the breadth of knowledge that allows you to understand particular events in context and the analytical depth to engage seriously with historical questions that resist simple answers. You will work with primary sources, learn to read them critically and to construct well-argued, evidence-based interpretations. You will engage with historiography, examining how historical understanding has developed over time and how different historians have asked different questions of the past.

The year abroad deepens this comparative dimension and gives you the experience of working across cultural and institutional contexts.

History graduates from UCL are well placed for careers across a wide range of fields. The civil service, law, journalism, policy, international organisations, think tanks, publishing, education, heritage and the cultural sector all recruit history graduates, and the analytical and communication skills developed through the discipline are valued by employers well beyond those sectors. Many graduates also go on to postgraduate study in history, international relations, law, public policy or related fields, and UCL's academic reputation is a significant asset in both the graduate market and in academic progression.