Oxford has a unique concentration of academic expertise in modern European history, with the largest number of permanent postholders working in the field of any university in the western world.
It has particular strengths in cultural, intellectual, transnational and social history. But above all it encourages diversity and asking new questions, from how peasants told folk tales in nineteenth-century France to the emotional commitments of activists in the 1968 protest movements on both sides of the Iron Curtain; from the rise of liberal humanitarianism in the mid-nineteenth century to the persecution of gay men sent to the Soviet Gulag; from the persistence of religious belief in the French Third Republic to the nature of patriotism in Nazi Germany. In this spirit, Oxford encourages graduates to follow their own intellectual interests within the degree and equip them with the best supervision and skills to do so.
Core Historical Methods classes will acquaint you with some key approaches, such as the oral history of protest movements, the subjective experience of war and violence, and photographs as a form of global politics, which provide modern European historians with a critical theoretical framework for their own empirical research. There will also be opportunities for you to consider the application of particular theories and methods to topics of special interest to you. Great emphasis will be placed upon class discussion, and on the creation of an intellectual community among students.
