Welcome to the School of History

The School of History at St Andrews is the vibrant setting for a large community of researchers and students of History. Part of the ancient university of St Andrews and sited in the centre of the old town of St Andrews, the School of History provides top quality teaching in a beautiful setting. 

Thinking about Postgraduate Study?

With over 50 members of staff, a large graduate community and extensive specialist library resources the School of History provides an ideal environment for postgraduate study.

For information on taught postgraduate programmes (graduate diploma, MLitt, MPhil) click here.

For information on funding for taught programmes and PhDs click here

Scholarships for intensive language tuition

Additional key benefits of studying as a postgraduate student at St Andrews:

  • Research funds – individual allowances and discretionary awards
  • Office space
  • Opportunities for teaching

Dr Guy Rowlands awarded a Senior Research Fellowship by the British Academy

Dr Rowlands has been elected to one of seven Senior Research Fellowships by the British Academy for the academic year 2010-11. He will spend the Fellowship completing the manuscript for a book with O.U.P. on "The Military-Industrial Complex of Louis XIV's France". In the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14) Louis XIV's war efforts were so burdensome that an early “military-industrial complex” of financiers and contractors emerged to distort the state's priorities, as military out-sourcing slipped the government's control. By examining France’s bankers, army financiers, arms industries and artillery service, this project explains how military effectiveness was slowly undermined to the point of collapse, and it will also suggest how the French monarchy started the long journey to political isolation that culminated in the Revolution of 1789.

Dr David Allan Receives 2010 Eliza Atkins Gleason Book Award

A Nation of Readers: The Lending Library in Georgian England (London: British Library, 2008) has been awarded the 2010 Eliza Atkins Gleason Book Award by the Gleason Book Award Committee of the American Library Association Library History Round Table. Presented every third year, the Gleason Award recognizes the best book written in English in the field of library history. An in-depth analysis of the mechanics of reading in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England, A Nation of Readers draws upon a wide array of evidentiary sources to explore the book clubs, subscription and circulating libraries, and other book-lending entities that preceded the public library.


Dr Chandrika Kaul interviewed by Melvin Bragg on BBC Radio 4

Dr Chandrika Kaul, lecturer in British imperialism and print culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was recently a guest on Melvin Bragg's In Our Time on BBC Radio 4. As in her past contributions to the same programme, Dr Kaul provided her expert perspective on Indian and British imperial history. In this instance, she discussed the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the rebellion that  followed. Details can be found found on BBC Radio 4's designated page for Dr Kaul, which also provides a facility to hear this and her past contributions (please note that you may not be able to listen to the programme if you are accessing it from outside the UK): 


St Andrews library accessions major new digital resources

St Andrews library has subscribed to two major new digital collections to support advanced work in Reformation and Early Modern History.

The TEMPO database is a large collection of 16th and 17th century pamphlets published by Brill.  It offers complete accessed to some of the greatest surviving collections of early German and Dutch pamphlets: the Knuttel collection in the Royal Library in The Hague, the Van Alphen collection of Groningen library, and the Tübingen pamphlet project.  These new accessions complement major collections of French, Swiss and German materials already available in St Andrews. 

St Andrews Early Modernists have also welcomed the decision to subscribe to the digital version of the English 16th- and 17th-century State Papers.  An ongoing venture of Gale / Centage, this will make available to scholars working in the field a vast amount of primary source material in a convenient digital format. It includes images of most of the manuscript records produced by central government in the Tudor period, and now preserved in The National Archives at Kew and the British Library.


Dr Struck to deliver a keynote speech

Bernhard Struck

On 11th June 2010 Dr Struck will speak on the opening panel of the Summer School of the Flying University of Transnational Humanities, organized by the Research Institute of Comparative History and Culture, Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea. Dr Struck’s paper is entitled ‘Fractured Unity. The making and unmaking of borders and their transnational dynamics in modern Europe’. For further details see http://geschichte-transnational.clio-online.net/termine/id=12731%3E

Forthcoming Conferences

The School of History will be hosting a number of conferences and workshops in 2010 including the biennial meeting of the Reformation Studies Colloquiumn, the Shahnameh and Persianate Identity conference hosted by the Institute for Iranian Studies and a Transnational Media workshop hosted by the Centre for Transnational History. Further details of all the conferences hosted by the School can be found by visiting the Forthcoming Conferences page.

Forthcoming Conferences


School of History ranked amongst the top in the UK for research and teaching

In recent league tables published by the Guardian and Times newspapers the School of History at St Andrews has achieved substantial recognition for its research quality and for the student experience it provides.

In The Guardian University Guide 2010 St Andrews was ranked 5th in the UK for History and History of Art. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2009/may/12/university-guide-history-history-of-art

In The Times Good University Guide 2010 St Andrews was ranked 9th in the UK and 1st in Scotland for History.
http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/tol_gug/gooduniversityguide.php

AHRC Block Grant Awards

The School of History has been successful in its bid to secure one of the prestigious AHRC Block Grant Awards for Doctoral Scholarships. The award means that the School of History has secured 17 AHRC Doctoral Studentships over the next five years. The successful bid reflects considerable external confidence in the School, its academic standards, resources, and the quality of the training offered. Using this award as a platform, the School will continue to build on its reputation as one of Scotland's premier Postgraduate communities.

For more information on applying for one of these awards, please follow the link to the AHRC postgraduate funding page.


 




News and Events Briefing

Mediaeval History
Monday, 22 March
Bruce Campbell (Queens Belfast)
"Crop yields on English demesnes after the Black Death'
5.15 pm, Old Class Library, St. John's House

Scottish Historical Research
Thursday, 25 March
Steven Reid (Glasgow) Combined with Reformation Studies
'Scotland's Genevan Academies? Civic Improvement and Protestant Arts Colleges in Post-Reformation Scotland'
5.15 pm, New Seminar Room, St John's House

Modern History
Wednesday, 14 April
Dr Anna-Maria Misra (Oxford)
'Sgt-Major Gandhi: Indian Nationalism and Non-Violent Martiality’
4.00 pm, Seminar Room 8, New Arts Building

The Production, Commercialisation and Consumption of Luxury Textiles in Italy and the Burgundian Netherlands c. 1400-1600
Friday, 30 April
Bringing together historians from Britain, Belgium, France and Italy, the workshop aims to examine the changes in the production, trade and use of luxury textiles from the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries.
9.00am - 5.30pm in Lower and Upper College Hall

For full information about the seminar programme please click here


View archived News and Events