The first principal of King’s College – Hector Boece – was a historian, and today’s History Department has been thriving since its foundation in 1898.
It is part of the School of Divinity, History, Philosophy and Art History and has close interdisciplinary cooperation with Humanities, Social Sciences, Physical and Computing Sciences and Medicine subjects in the University. Our students come from all over the world to explore Scottish, European and World History of all periods from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century.
Areas of study include Scottish and European History, Global History, Scandinavian History and Culture, Early Modern and Medieval Europe, Poland-Lithuania, Enlightenment Studies, the History of Ideas, Religion, Philosophy and Science – all led by supervisors who are scholars with an international reputation in their field.
Founded by Bishop Elphinstone in 1495, the University holds excellent library resources and rich archival materials for historians to exploit, including the archives of the Catholic Church in Scotland, archives on the social and cultural history of the North-East of Scotland, the history of science, and many collections on the history of Scotland in its European context. Aberdeen provides a unique research environment for doctoral students, with opportunities for postgraduate training and a lively research seminar culture.
September and January start dates available
Aberdeen historians research and supervise in concentrations of research activity embedded within and across the following research centres:
Research Interests
Zionism and Jewish Studies
Zionism; Jewish studies; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Zionist thought within its historical and intellectual contexts; Jewish identity discourses, especially the diverse experiences among Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi communities in both Israel and the diaspora.
Supervisor: Dr Alessandra Cecolin
Transnational Culture and Resistance
Transnational connections in Europe and the Atlantic during the twentieth century; diasporas and migrations; connections between political resistance and cultural practice, especially in Europe and the US; transnational networks between SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) religious and ethnic communities and the Western world.
Supervisors: Dr Cecilia Brioni, Dr Alessandra Cecolin, Dr Owen Walsh
Modern History of Childhood and Youth
Coming-of-age narratives in historical perspective; generational struggles in modern European societies; youth and political activism; subcultural youth; delinquency, criminality and working-class childhoods; commercial youth cultures; adolescence in popular representation
Supervisors: Dr Cecilia Brioni, Dr Laura Mair
US Intellectual History
Race in American thought after independence; the American Enlightenment; antislavery and abolitionist thought; the history of Black political thought, especially as understood in Black Feminist and Black Radical scholarship.
Supervisors: Dr Owen Walsh; Dr Brad Bow
Political and Intellectual Ideologies in the Modern Middle East Intellectual and political history of the modern Middle East, especially the evolution of ideologies such as nationalism, secularism, feminism, socialism, Islamism, and other religious movements and how they have influenced state formation, social movements, and geopolitical conflicts, from the rise of Arab nationalism to the ideological realignments of the post-colonial and post-9/11 eras.
Supervisors: Dr Alessandra Cecolin; Dr Andrew Dilley
History in Videogames
Videogames as a historical medium; representations of the past in videogames, particularly representations of the medieval and early modern periods.
Supervisors: Dr William Hepburn; Professor Jackson Armstrong
Cultural history of science, technology and medicine in Britain from the eighteenth century to the present; history of science and literature.
Supervisors: Dr Ben Marsden and Professor Ralph O’Connor
Cultural history of food and foodways from the seventeenth century to the present day; historical approaches to culinary writing, technologies of food production, and patterns of consumption.
Supervisor: Dr David Watts; Dr Ben Marsden
Eighteenth-century British and Irish political identity and the development of nationalism; the Enlightenment in the British Isles; intellectual history of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment; Scottish philosophical and literary societies; Scottish intellectual, moral and philosophical culture in the age of revolution; intellectual currents of Scottish and Irish global diaspora; the ‘First’ British Empire; aspects of political, social, religious and intellectual history of Ireland; the history of Catholicism in Scotland since 1707; and the political history of Britain in the Victorian era.
Supervisors: Professor Michael Brown and Dr Bradford Bow
Scottish and English politics and landed society (thirteenth to sixteenth centuries); aspects of medieval and early modern nobility, rulership, law, and towns (including Aberdeen); Anglo-Scottish relations; medieval and early modern frontiers, royal courts, borderlands and peripheries; medieval warfare; religious history and the history of women; aspects of law, legal culture, courts and litigation; medieval demography.
Supervisors: Professor Jackson Armstrong, Dr Marie-Luise Ehrenschwendtner, Dr William Hepburn and Dr Aly Macdonald
European and/or Scottish histories of witchcraft, medicine, sexuality, law and crime; Calvinism and Reformed Protestantism (especially about social control) in the broad period c. 1450-c. 1700; aspects of urban and noble society; aspects of military history; aspects of the history of women, early modern Scottish church history and royal courts.
Supervisors: Professor William Naphy, Professor Jackson Armstrong, Dr Aly Macdonald, Dr Claire Loughlin, Dr William Hepburn and Dr Marie-Luise Ehrenschwendtner
Military, social, political, religious and intellectual history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its successor states (Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, German-Polish borderlands)
Supervisors: Professor Karin Friedrich and Professor Robert Frost
Political, cultural, religious and social history of the Holy Roman Empire, Thirty Years War, German Enlightenment, the history of noble elites and cities in Germany and Central Europe, the development of modern Germany during the nineteenth century.
Supervisors: Professor Karin Friedrich and Professor Robert Frost
Emigration within the British empire since the eighteenth century; Modern Scottish History; Oral History; Medicine and Migration; History of the British empire and the Commonwealth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the impact of the empire on Britain; economics and business histories of the empire, the politics of the Commonwealth, history of settler societies. Africa and the African diaspora in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; slavery and abolition.
Supervisors: Professor Marjory Harper, Dr Andrew Dilley
Any aspect of Modern Russian and Soviet history (particularly c.1900–c.1930), and also transport history, particularly in relation to the role of railway transport in warfare in Britain and Europe; British railway history.
Supervisors: Professor Anthony Heywood
The medieval North, particularly Old Norse-Icelandic literature, language, culture, and society; Old Norse poetry, and literary-legal connections in medieval Iceland, riddles, Norse mythology, and translation; the Sagas of Icelanders, legendary sagas and chivalric sagas, including comparisons with medieval Irish literature; aspects of Norse-Icelandic literature.
Supervisors: Professor Ralph O’Connor and Dr Hannah Burrows
Especially French history post-1789; aspects of social history; private archives of noble families, archival theory and practices; aspects of modern European history, especially political cultural history, military and media history as well as the history of the monarchy in the long nineteenth century.
Supervisor: Dr Heidi Mehrkens
International and global political history and a wide array of modern European history; history of international affairs; Jewish/non-Jewish relations and historical methodology; modern social, political and cultural histories of the Middle East, including wider conflict between national and religious groups; aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Supervisors: Professor Thomas Weber
History of bodily practices and appearance; history of beauty; fashion history; LGBTQI+ histories; gender and race; identity and embodiment; discipline and marginalisation of bodies.
Supervisor: Dr Cecilia Brioni
Experiences of education in nineteenth-century Britain, particularly evangelical enterprises such as ragged schools; Christianity and child welfare; concepts of childhood and protection; institutional childcare; children and disability; child emigration initiatives.
Supervisor: Dr Laura Mair
Black freedom struggles in the US, especially during “the long civil rights movement”; transnational Leftist politics in modern North America, especially in relation to the Mexican Revolution and the US Popular Front era; the Black Radical Tradition; African American literature and its relation to Leftist formations.
Supervisor: Dr Owen Walsh
Eligible self-funded international Postgraduate Research Masters' students starting in September 2025 will receive the Aberdeen Global Scholarship. Explore this Global Scholarship, including eligibility details, on our dedicated page.
Aberdeen Global ScholarshipNormally, the minimum entrance requirement for admission to the PhD is a degree with Second Class Honours (Upper Division) in an appropriate field, or equivalent. It is preferable that you hold a Masters in the chosen area of study as well.
Alongside your application form, you will need to upload the following supporting documents online:
Eligible self-funded international Postgraduate Research Masters' students starting in September 2025 will receive the Aberdeen Global Scholarship. Explore this Global Scholarship, including eligibility details, on our dedicated page.
To see our full range of scholarships, visit our Funding Database.
Historians' skills are needed for any profession that values quick and critical thinking, detailed analysis, close reading, the art of comparison and testing concepts through practical case studies. History graduates have made careers in politics, become prime ministers (Gordon Brown) and chancellors (Alastair Darling), but also gone into banking, the law, journalism and media.
A postgraduate history degree offers numerous possibilities, including university teaching and research posts; curatorial work; academic administration; freelance writing and broadcasting; teaching in Scotland, Europe and North America.
Our PhD students conduct research in a wide variety of subject areas.
Dr Rose Luminiello and Dr Amy Hayes are among our recent History PhD graduates.
