Faculty of History, Cambridge

Faculty of History, Cambridge
Name	Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Established	1724
Type	Faculty
Location	Cambridge, England
Parent	University of Cambridge

Contents

Faculty of History, Cambridge is the principal teaching and research unit for historical studies at the University of Cambridge, encompassing undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral provision. The faculty draws on long traditions associated with colleges such as Trinity College, Cambridge, King's College, Cambridge, St John's College, Cambridge and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and engages with international institutions including Institut d'Histoire du Temps Présent, Max Planck Institute for History, Smithsonian Institution, Bibliothèque nationale de France and The British Library.

History

The faculty traces intellectual lineages through figures linked to Thomas Cranmer, Oliver Cromwell, William Pitt the Younger, Earl Grey, John Maynard Keynes, Lord Acton, Thomas Babington Macaulay and Lord Halifax, and institutional change shaped by events such as the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the Industrial Revolution and the Second World War. Its archival collections and teaching were expanded in response to developments including the foundation of the Royal Historical Society, the debates around the Oxford Movement, the suffrage campaigns of Emmeline Pankhurst, the constitutional crises of Reform Act 1832 and the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles. Key curricular reforms reflected comparative engagements with histories of Tsarist Russia, Meiji Japan, Ottoman Empire, Qing dynasty and United States political evolution, while methodological shifts paralleled work by historians influenced by Fernand Braudel, E. P. Thompson, Marc Bloch, Geoffrey Elton and Eric Hobsbawm.

Administration is coordinated with collegiate representation and subject divisions covering chronological and regional specialisms. Departments and teaching groups intersect with centres focused on Medieval studies, Early Modern studies, Modern British history, European history, South Asian studies, African history, East Asian history and American history. Interdisciplinary links are maintained with chairs and posts associated with named benefactions such as the Regius Professorship of History, the Smuts Professorship of Commonwealth History, the Professor of Medieval History and the Visiting Professorships that connect to institutions like Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University, University of Oxford and London School of Economics.

Research activity is organised through thematic centres and project-based units including the Centre for African Studies, the Centre of South Asian Studies, the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, the Haddon Library collaborations, and networks liaising with the Wellcome Trust, the European Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Major research projects have explored topics from the Black Death and Little Ice Age to the histories of Slavery in the British Empire, Transatlantic slave trade, Atlantic World, European integration, Postcolonial theory and digital humanities initiatives allied to Text Encoding Initiative standards and the digitisation efforts of Cambridge University Library.

Teaching and research draw on the manuscript and print holdings of Cambridge University Library, college libraries such as those of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Peterhouse, Cambridge, Queen's College, Cambridge and specialist repositories including the Scott Polar Research Institute, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and archives such as the Essex Record Office and National Archives (United Kingdom). Digital resource provision links to projects hosted by Corpus Christi College, Cambridge fellows and collaborations with JSTOR, Project Gutenberg, Europeana and the British Newspaper Archive.

Public-facing activity includes lecture series, partnerships with cultural organisations such as the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Imperial War Museums, Royal Historical Society events, and contributions to media outlets referencing episodes like the Suez Crisis, Gallipoli campaign, Dunkirk evacuation and anniversaries of Battle of Waterloo. The faculty supports schoolteacher programmes aligned with syllabuses mentioning figures such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Florence Nightingale, Suleiman the Magnificent, Catherine the Great and curricular resources for examinations administered by boards including AQA, OCR and Edexcel.

Category:History faculties of the University of Cambridge