Research Degrees

With 200 historians and hundreds more in sister disciplines – archaeology, natural sciences, literary criticism, and economics – Oxford offers the scope to research global, imperial, and ‘area’ history across a wide range of places, periods and themes. There are many opportunities to present research findings at scheduled seminar meetings as well as at less formal workshops and reading groups. The Global and Imperial History group supports a training seminar in methodology and concepts and encourages comparative work. The History Faculty accepts 70 doctoral students a year.


Resources

The Rhodes House Library (Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies) contains exceptional resources in books and manuscripts in African and imperial history, including for example missionary history. The Oriental Institute Library houses the former Indian Institute collections, and is a dedicated resource for South Asian, Islamic and Jewish Studies. The Middle East Centre has an extensive collection of private papers. The Chinese Studies Centre serves Chinese history, and the Nissan Institute, Japanese history. As might be expected, the University is particularly rich in materials for the study of British history and the history of the European continent, including Russia, while the Rothermere American Institute provides a specialized library in United States history.


Funding opportunities

  • The Beit Fund is available to be used for any purpose that will promote the study of imperial and global history in the University of Oxford. Enrolled students may apply to the Fund to examine archives in the United Kingdom and abroad, or to publish theses approved by the examiners and considered to be of exceptional merit. There is also a Research Scholarship in Imperial or Commonwealth History for advanced research students, providing up to £12,000 for up to one year. For more information, please contact the Fund’s Council Secretariat.
  • Applicants to undertake doctoral research at Oxford are also eligible to apply to the University’s graduate scholarship scheme, the Clarendon Fund.


Current doctoral students