Classics/History

Classics and history together offer one of the most intellectually expansive combinations available in the humanities, spanning over two millennia of civilisation and drawing on a diverse range of methods, languages, and source types. Classics is concerned with the literature, history, philosophy, art, and material culture of ancient Greece and Rome, the civilisations that laid the foundations for much of European and world culture. History, as it is practised at degree level, covers the full breadth of the past and develops the analytical skills needed to interpret evidence, construct arguments, and understand how societies change over time.

The two subjects enrich each other continually.

At the University of Glasgow this four-year full-time programme allows you to study both subjects with real depth, working across ancient and more recent history and engaging with Greek and Latin language study if you wish to read the texts in their original form. You will examine the politics, society, culture, and art of the ancient world alongside the history of later periods, developing a long perspective on historical change and the capacity to move between different kinds of evidence and argument. A year abroad is built into the programme, giving you the chance to study or work in a different country and to encounter history and classical traditions from a different vantage point.

Graduates from classics and history programmes move into careers in teaching, journalism, publishing, the civil service, archival and heritage work, law, and a wide range of public and private sector roles where the ability to research, write, and argue clearly is valued. Academic careers in classics, ancient history, or medieval and modern history are a path for those who continue to postgraduate research. The analytical and communication skills developed through sustained engagement with evidence across very long time spans transfer to an exceptionally wide range of professional contexts.