Undergraduate History 2026-2027

A comprehensive treatment of this enormous subject is obviously impracticable in an introductory course within the space of one semester, so we aim to highlight a selection of key political, economic, social and other themes. The selection varies from year to year, but is likely to include the rise of Bolshevism, reconstruction and European integration after WW2, and the Cold War. The twice-weekly lectures introduce the topics, while the eight tutorial meetings emphasise the development of practical transferable research and presentation skills as well as the building of historical knowledge.

This course will introduce students to the subject of university level history. Team taught lectures will introduce students to approaches, sources, and the dilemmas facing academic historians.

The course provides a broad overview of changes which the Renaissance and Reformations introduced to European culture, politics, religion, society and people’s understanding of their role in the world. It traces these developments in a comparative way, from Europe’s Atlantic coast to East Central Europe and Russia. These changes include: a changing image of the world and its relationship to the spiritual during the Renaissance; a time of unrest triggered by European Reformations; European expansion; and the growth of monarchies and republics.

This course presents an overview of US history, from its origins in the colonisation of North America to its emergence as the preeminent global power. To understand this dramatic story, the course discusses Europeans' confrontations with the Indigenous societies that they sought to replace; Black struggles against slavery and apartheid; and experiences of diverse migrant populations. We will see that US history has been one of encounter, conflict, and transformation of multiple populations.

This is an intensive, interdisciplinary two-week Summer School course hosted by DHPA and the Go Abroad Team that will introduce students to the history and culture of modern Scotland.

The Summer School will also include local visits and social events that will provide students with an opportunity to experience the culture and history of the north-east of Scotland.

Course introduces students to the crucible of the modern age. Hinging on the American, French and 1848 Revolutions, it explores how men and women in elite and popular communities generated new modes of living, experience and expression and how they understood and manipulated the natural world. Attention will be given to the Enlightenment, Revolution, Empire, Romanticism and Ideology with interrelated developments in politics, culture and science also being explored. Students will be introduced to the works of figures such as Newton, Voltaire, Paine, Goethe, Marx, Darwin and Nietzsche. Topics will include Salons, the Terror, nationalism and secularisation. Download course guide

Between 1100 and 1500 western Europe underwent fundamental transformations: new technical, economic and political challenges, fresh developments in religious and intellectual life and catastrophes like wars, diseases and climate change fundamentally shaped European societies for centuries to come. This course offers a thematic survey of medieval western societies, focusing on religion, kingship and warfare, economy and environment, cultural renaissances and intellectual novelties, the emergence of national states and identities and the discovery of new worlds. 

How have communities and identities formed, changed, and been contested in the Modern World? Through a variety of case studies, this course will help you reflect on how culture and agency shape the formation of communities and collective identities. In addition, the course aims to introduce you to the methodologies of social and cultural history, by fostering the employment of responsible and ethical approaches to research, especially when it involves people and communities.

This course looks at the main debates in the history of Scotland from c.1000-2000AD. It focuses on themes and moments in Scotland's history, such as  interaction of 'feudal' and 'Gaelic' influences in the making of the Kingdom from c.1100-1300; the Wars of Independence in the fourteenth century, the Protestant Reformation of the 1560s, the Union of the Crowns and Parliaments in 1603 and 1707; the Highland Clearances; and the effects of global war, empire and democracy in the twentieth century. It shows how historians use sources to advance different interpretations and create a new understanding.  

The course explores how empires were formed and sustained by examining political power, economic systems, and cultural exchanges from the early modern period to the present. It examines how slavery, migration, and trade helped empires expand, and how knowledge and representation were used to justify control. The course also covers anti-colonial/post-colonial movements and the changes that followed the end of colonial rule. In doing so, it considers how the legacy of empires continues to shape today’s global systems, identities, and ways of thinking.

This course uses sport as a way of trying to understand the historical past as well as viewing it as an active agent in producing historical change. The main chronological focus is on the development of modern sports from the nineteenth century onwards. Geographically, the focus is on western Europe, but there is also detailed consideration of the British Empire, the United States and other areas. Issues addressed include social class, 'race', gender, violence, senses of identity and governmental policies. A comparative and interdisciplinary approach is encouraged.

This course is open to visiting students who have to finish their end-of-studies thesis at their home universities, and wish to develop this within the framework of this course. There is no formal scheduled teaching, but after an initial meeting to discuss individual topics, students will get some support and supervision in the area of their chosen research topic.

This course normally examines the history of the First World War in an international comparative perspective through detailed study of contemporary as well as secondary sources, with sub-groups focusing on a specific country.

In 2026/27 there will be one sub-group only, with a maximum of 25 students, and it will be focused on the war experience of Russia. Following an introductory lecture, the classes will be used to help you design and complete an individual research project on a topic of your choosing.

This course offers a chronological survey of Ireland and the Irish from the Act of Union with Great Britain to the present day.  It will consider the social, political, cultural and economic aspects of that history, and will place the island of Ireland within its wider contexts, as part of the United Kingdom, as part of Europe, as part of the British Empire, and as the source of the global Irish Diaspora.  The course will focus on a number of central issues.

This course looks at the development of warfare in early modern Europe in the light of the theory, first proposed by Michael Roberts, that Europe in this period saw a military revolution that had profound effects not just on the way wars were fought, but on European state formation and social development. It analyses the views of supporters and opponents of the theory, the technological changes seen in warfare in this period, and the conduct of war at the tactical and strategic levels, before going on to consider the changing culture of war and its impact on state and society. The course will cover a range of military conflicts across the whole continent of Europe, and will also consider the impact of the new European methods of waging war upon the wider world in the first great age of European imperial expansion. The course is centred round a debate between historians, and is intended in part to develop skills in the weighing and critique of historical arguments in the secondary literature.

The body is often considered as something tangible, material, somehow ‘natural’. However, our understanding of the function and appearance of body parts and bodily phenomena is heavily shaped by social and cultural expectations connected with ideas of sanity and illness, beauty and ugliness, normativity and deviancy. This course invites students to explore the historical development of these ideas, in order to question the supposed naturalness of the meaning we give to different body parts, body shapes, and bodily practices.

Food is such a basic human necessity that we can easily take for granted the huge variety of produce available in our supermarkets. This course explores how familiar foods like coffee, chocolate and citrus were introduced to European tables. Why, in past cultures, has food been so bound up with questions of ethnicity, class, race and religion? How have recipes and diets changed with time, how have people written about and discussed food? And what meanings have been ascribed through the ages to food, eating and cookery? If you are hungry for knowledge, this is the course for you. 

Since 2012, #BlackLivesMatter protests have renewed the struggle for racial equality in the US. This module illustrates a longer history of efforts to establish rights and equality for US African Americans since emancipation. We will explore a diverse range of movements and approaches, and will interrogate the common (mis)understanding of Black civil rights activism.

Few changes in the twentieth century were more dramatic than the collapse of European colonial empires and of a world system centred on Europe. Drawing widely on a vibrant literature, this course will examine the decline of British imperialism. It will consider causes and consequences of that decline. It focuses on key areas including India, Africa, and the former settler colonies, Britain itself, and global developments such as the cold war and the rise of global humanitarianism. In so doing it sheds new light on a modern world still haunted by the ghosts of empire. 

This course is open to visiting students who have to finish their end-of-studies thesis at their home universities, and wish to develop this within the framework of this course. There is no formal scheduled teaching, but after an initial meeting to discuss individual topics, students will get some support and supervision in the area of their chosen research topic.

The course investigates Anglo-Scottish relations from the death of Alexander III (1286) to the union of the crowns (1603). Political, diplomatic and military relations are examined as well as a wide range of social and cultural issues. An introductory section covers important events in chronological order before weekly themes are examined in detail. The lecturer provides a general framework of essential knowledge while students give seminar presentations on particular illustrative examples of the weekly themes. The mentalities and attitudes underpinning Anglo-Scottish relations are carefully explored and key themes include warfare, diplomacy, identity, religion and culture.

This course looks at how history is written. It considers the problems involved in studying and explaining the past, and the many dilemmas faced by historians in reconstructing it. By examining the ways in which history has been written from the Ancient Greeks to Postmodernism, it considers the limits of historical study, asks whether history can ever be a science, and reveals the assumptions behind the various approaches to history that inform its writing. It is designed to provide honours history students with an essential understanding of what they are doing when they study history.

The course will involve each student working individually on a historical project of his or her own choice, under the supervision of the course co-ordinator.

Hitler is omnipresent in modern life. He appears everywhere in the media and he is invoked all the time in public and private discourse. Yet Adolf Hitler remains an enigma. While he tends to be reduced to a one-dimensional cardboard cut out villain outside of academia, inside academia there has been a tendency in recent years to diminish Hitler’s importance and to push Hitler to the sidelines.

The courts of kings and other rulers in the later middle ages (c. 1300 – c. 1500), in which they and their households lived and hosted their subjects as well as visitors from other lands, have been characterised by scholars as both a grand stage for a dying chivalric culture and a creator of conditions for the modern state. This course addresses this apparent paradox and examines the many facets of this phenomenon, using the Scottish royal court as its starting point but also making use of evidence from around Europe. It draws on theories and methods from a range of academic disciplines including sociology, anthropology, art history and literature. Topics include the household, the palace, the competition for status amongst elites at court and the court as a stage for presenting political messages. Students taking the course will emerge with a detailed understanding of the court and the different forms it took and a view on how it shaped the broader history of Europe.

On the eve of the First World War Europe was a continent of monarchies. A long 19th century of revolutions, wars, growing literacy, an expanding public sphere, changes in social, economic, intellectual and technological life and imperial expansion lay behind them, but the continent’s monarchical systems had survived in surprisingly rude health. That monarchies had flourished throughout these profound transformations points to their suppleness and ingenuity. This course offers new perspectives on the political cultures of the states and societies of 19th-century Europe. 

The course examines the origins of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and its developments from multiple angles in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the complex dynamic that constitutes ‘the conflict’. The course will investigate the causes of the Palestinian refugee crisis and of the Arab-Israeli wars. It will introduce students to the Arab-Israeli peace process and familiarise students with the polarised historiography surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This course critically evaluates representations and functions of Old Norse myth and legend in both medieval and modern contexts. It will enable students to better understand the myths, beliefs and stories of Viking and medieval Scandinavia in their own historical contexts, and to analyse the political and cultural implications of their endurance, significance and popularity into the modern world.

The undergraduate dissertation is the final-year major research undertaking, based on primary and secondary material and providing a critical analysis of a specific subject chosen by the student. It is obligatory for Single Honours students, whereas Joint Honours students choose to write their dissertation in either of the two subjects. After initial sessions about the nature of the dissertation and research approaches, students develop a topic with the help of a member of staff, who will also supervise their project throughout. 

History is not simply a dry, academic study of the past; it shapes a host of contemporary political, economic and cultural attitudes and is a central underpinning to the tourist and heritage industries - now one of the largest sectors of employment among mature western economies. This course is designed to give a critical understanding of the theoretical and practical links (as well as clear distinctions) between the practice of 'academic' History and 'public' History. This is done by having students assess how heritage and tourist businesses project a particular version of the past.