Research Centres: A-Z

A working group of Oxford historians exploring cultural and intellectual interactions between Britain and Europe since the eighteenth century.

The Centre for Early Modern British and Irish History sustains and enhances the University’s strength in early modern British and Irish historical studies.

The History Faculty has recently established a Centre for the History of Childhood. This is the first centre for the history of childhood in the United Kingdom, and it is hoped that its creation will help to foster interest in this burgeoning area of historical research within and without the University. 

The Oxford CCW Programme is devoted to the interdisciplinary study of war and armed conflict. Some eleven titles have now been published in the CCW series at Oxford University Press, including The Changing Character of War (2011).

Late Antique and Byzantine Studies concerns the thousand-year period which followed the adoption of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine until the sack of Constantinople over a thousand years later in 1453.

The Modern European History Research Centre (MEHRC), based in Oxford University’s History Faculty, was set up in 1999 to generate new and exciting Research Projects in European and British history from the Renaissance to the present, to build Research Networks with research institutes and universities in the UK, Europe and worldwide, to provide opportunities for research collaboration and facilities for Visiting Researchers, and to train new generations of Research Students in the field of modern European and British History.

The Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research was established in the summer of 2010 to present and promote research activity by senior scholars working in Byzantine Studies and related fields. The Centre hosts and helps fund conferences, colloquia and special lectures, and also commissions and supports research projects by researchers working in Oxford and with close links with the University.

The Oxford Centre for Global History was established by the History Faculty in June 2011 to reflect its strong commitment to the field. Global History in Oxford is defined broadly as the global movement of people, goods ,and ideas and the consequences that flow from them. Chronologically, it extends across all historical periods from ancient to late modern.

‘Late Antiquity’, the period between approximately 250 and 750 CE, witnessed massive cultural and political changes: the emergence of the world’s great monotheistic religions, rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; the development, and eventual destruction, of the Sasanian empire, the last Persian empire of Antiquity; the Germanic conquest and settlement of the western Roman empire; the transformation of Byzantium into a militarised and christianised society. The world of 750 was radically different from the world of 250, and the legacy of the changes that had occurred is very much with us today – from European states tracing their origins to Germanic invaders, to the cultural divide brought about by the rise of Islam.

Oxford’s centre for research in medieval history exists to present and promote research activity among postgraduate students and members of the Faculty.

American history enjoys great vitality at Oxford thanks to its dynamic expansion in recent years. Housed in the Rothermere American Institute, OxCRUSH brings together the substantial body of American historians who work in Oxford.  

The history of science, medicine, and technology is a long-established discipline in Oxford. R. T. Gunther and Charles Singer were among the pioneers of the subject early in the twentieth century, and since the 1920s the Museum of the History of Science has housed an outstanding collection of scientific instruments and a fine specialist library.

The Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine is a leading international centre for graduate research in most aspects of the history of medicine, with particular expertise in the area of infectious diseases and medicine in tropical countries.