About

At the UCL History department, we nurture talent irrespective of students’ backgrounds and maintain a learning environment in which students are both supported and challenged to achieve their full potential. All of our permanent academic staff engage in their own research while teaching, ensuring that we offer a modern and research-led curriculum.

The history of History

The first lecture on history at UCL occurred in 1830, only four years after the University’s founding. UCL was the first entirely secular university to admit students regardless of religion and the first to admit women on equal terms with men.

Finding a suitable person to be the first Professor of History here was difficult. At the time, it was in Germany, not Britain, that the modern historical profession originated. Not until the early twentieth century did History, as a discipline, become established at UCL - thanks to the innovations of Professor A.F. Pollard, who also led the creation of the University of London School of History, the Institute of Historical Research and the Historical Association.

Around this time, the Department introduced one of its most distinctive features: the study of both ancient and modern history. By the mid-century, its academic staff covered most aspects of British and European history, while US and Latin American history flourished too. We now also teach and research global histories from the Ancient Near East to modern China and the Caribbean.

Alfred Cobban, the distinguished historian of France, and Arnaldo Momigliano, the great ancient historian whose intellectual range covered most of historiography, did a great deal to consolidate the reputation of UCL History as one of Britain’s most ambitious and encompassing departments.

UCL History continues to play a leading role in shaping the development of the discipline. The work of Catherine Hall and Matthew Smith at the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery on a pioneering database has been the foundation for a new understanding of the extent of slavery’s impact on the development of modern Britain. In 2024, we appointed five new academic posts covering African, Modern East Asian, Modern European Social and Economic, and Environmental History.

Opportunities