BA History and Philosophy

The programme provides students with an intellectual training in the disciplines of History and Philosophy, which are mutually enriching subjects. Its key premise is that understanding the present (and anticipating the future) requires the ability to study and interpret the past and to appreciate how the tools of historical inquiry and the insights of philosophical theory combine to illuminate human societies, including those of the contemporary world.
The study of Philosophy enables students to learn about cutting-edge debates on ethics, metaphysics, theory of knowledge and political philosophy, as well as studying some of the key thinkers in the history of philosophy, such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Mill and Marx. The programme is designed to equip students with a range of skills which together foster the ability to practise self-motivated learning and increase the capacity to undertake independent learning in a progressive way.
History is vital to understanding the world around us. What is gender, race, class, religion, the state, empire, capitalism? What is the USA, China, the United Kingdom, Ireland? What is NATO and the EU? Our historians explain the modern world by reaching back to the Roman empire, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the great modern revolutions across all of Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia. From their first year, we trust our students to make choices and range widely across all these histories to understand where we have come from. And from the beginning of your degree you will be taught in small groups by expert historians. Our range in time and space, our trust in you to explore and make good choices, and our small group teaching from the first year of the degree, mark us out among our peer universities.