Excellent Teaching and Research Expertise
The History programme at Christ Church is widely recognised as one of the most successful in the United Kingdom whether in terms of the high standards of the teaching on offer, the quality of the student learning experience, or the breadth of a curriculum that ranges from the early medieval period to the twentieth century at a time when many university history programmes are tending to emphasize modern history.
In the last round of HEFCE teaching quality assessments – the university sector's equivalent of OFSTED – History was judged "excellent". Christ Church is the only university in southern England, beyond London, Oxford and Cambridge, with a History department to boast this distinction.
Research and postgraduate supervision in the Department of History and American Studies has an internationally respected reputation. This is reflected in the results of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise when 75% of our submission was deemed to be internationally excellent or internationally recognised.
The History team at Christ Church are thus not merely teachers of history, they are also active research historians with an impressive track record of publications ranging from books on Athelstan, the first King of England, Medieval Noblewomen, and the English civil war to modern-themed works on the Cold War, the Vietnam conflict and the Northern Ireland Peace process. But research is not conducted in a vacuum; on the contrary, the research specialisms of the History team feed into their undergraduate teaching in such a way as ensure that all modules reflect the latest historiographical development.