History – (Ph.D.)

Many of the research opportunities in history are interdisciplinary and are available for most periods of history and in most geographical regions. PhD supervision is normally available in the following subject areas:

Classical, medieval and early modern medicine: reception(s) of Hippocratic medicine and Hippocratic Oath; history of medical ethics; history and iconography of melancholy and psychopathology; medical history/historiography as an academic discipline; genres of medical writing; interface between medicine and literature, Thomas Mann and medicine; medicine and philosophy; medicine and law (Dr T Rütten).

Death and burial: the history of poverty and poor relief in pre-industrial England (Professor J Boulton).

Gender, women’s history and the history of sexuality: Britain (Dr H Berry); the modern Atlantic world (Dr D Paton); China (Dr N Standen); Greece (Dr V Hionidou).

Historical demography: the history of nutrition, famine and mortality; the history of fertility, birth control and contraception (Dr V Hionidou).

History of ideas: revolutionary ideology in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain and France (Dr R Hammersley); European historiography (Dr L Racaut).

History of psychiatry: mental health and the ‘asylum’; forensic psychiatry, criminal lunacy and crime; the history of the body; early modern social and cultural history of health; history of hospitals; history of sexuality; domestic/household medicine; travel and medicine (Dr J Andrews).

Early medieval Britain and Europe (Dr S Ashley, Ms E Redgate).

National identity, inter-ethnic relations and border issues: China (Dr N Standen); Japan (Dr M Dusinberre); North America (Dr B Houston); Russia and Ukraine (Professor D Saunders); Mexico and Cuba (Dr K Brewster); the Caribbean (Dr D Paton); Spain (Dr A Quiroga); Ireland (Dr S Ashley, Dr F Campbell); the Irish in Britain (Dr J Allen).

Politics, international relations and the impact of war: modern British politics (Dr J Allen, Dr M Farr, Dr F Campbell); European fascism and the Nazi new order (Professor T Kirk); twentieth-century France (Dr M Perry); twentieth-century Italy (Dr C Baldoli); transwar Japan (Dr M Dusinberre); American Civil War and the United States in the nineteenth century (Professor S M Grant); the United States in the twentieth century (Dr B Houston); comparative history of frontiers (Dr N Standen).

Urban history and urban culture: history of the press in early modern France (Dr L Racaut); nineteenth-century Newcastle and the North East (Dr J Allen); eighteenth-century urban cultures in Britain (Dr H Berry); seventeenth-century London (Professor J Boulton); urban culture in the Habsburg Empire (Professor T Kirk).

For more information about staff specialisms please see the School's website.

There are also opportunities for joint supervision with Latin American researchers in the School of Modern Languages.