DPhil in History

The DPhil, or doctorate, in History is an advanced research degree, awarded on the basis of successful completion of an individual research thesis and an oral examination.

With 200 historians and hundreds more in sister disciplines – archaeology, anthropology, economics, natural sciences, material culture, and literary criticism – 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 provides a training seminar in methodology and concepts and encourages comparative work.

The Beit Fund

The Beit Fund is available to DPhil History students for any purpose that will promote the study of imperial and global history at 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. Link to further details on graduate funding at Oxford.

Gregory Hynes, DPhil in History:

Global History avoids isolation and insular understandings. For me, it highlights the importance of connections, interactions, exchanges, and conflicts between groups, communities, and nations to shaping identities and understandings in history. The picture can only be complete through looking at these interactions, and exploring the spaces between nation and national histories.

Riccardo Liberatore, DPhil in History:

Studying global history means taking part in a debate surrounding some of the big questions of our time, such as what it means to live in a global community and how globalization has shaped contemporary society.

Eiko Honda, DPhil in History:

Global history means engaging the history of human as part of the history of the globe, beyond nation- or human-centred thinking. I practice global history as a way to uncover histories of environmental thoughts that have long remained invisible in other methods of history writing. Environmental history is, I believe, inherently global.