Welcome to our new students!

Congratulations on gaining your place to study at Durham, and a warm welcome to the Department of History. We hope you will enjoy your time with us and that you will seize the opportunity both to build upon your established interests and enthusiasms and to broaden your horizons as a historian. You will have plenty of opportunity to do both. We offer one of the most varied, exciting, and wide-ranging History degree programmes in the country. You will explore the full range of history from the end of the Roman Empire to the present day. You will be able to study in more detail and in new ways topics you have encountered before, like the Tudor Monarchy, Nazi Germany, or the modern history of the USA. But we will also introduce you to less familiar periods and regions, like the European Middle Ages or the history of east Asia, and to new themes and approaches, such as environmental history, or the histories of science, visual cultures, and gender and sexuality.

We know you are ready for a challenge, an intellectual adventure, and we are certainly going to challenge you. But we will support you, too. Durham is now one of the largest History departments in the country: that’s why we can offer you such a rich variety and range of topics and types of history. But we pride ourselves on having a ‘small department’ feel and a small department’s friendliness and approachability. During the difficult past year, we have had to find new ways of teaching and new ways of staying in touch with and supporting our students. The experience wasn’t all bad; we’ve learned a lot. All the same, we are very much looking forward to being back in our familiar surroundings on North Bailey and at other sites in the ancient heart of the city of Durham. To live and work in such beautiful and historic surroundings, in the shadow of the Norman cathedral and the castle, we hope you will agree, is a privilege and an inspiration.

I wish you all happiness and success in your time with us.

Professor Len Scales

Head of Department