History and History of Art with a Year Abroad

History and history of art together make for a pairing that is both complementary and mutually enriching. History provides the framework of events, forces, institutions and ideas within which art has been produced and received across the ages. History of art brings close attention to visual objects, asking how images and artefacts mean, what techniques and traditions they draw on, and how they reflect and shape the societies that make them.

Each discipline deepens and complicates the other, and graduates who can move between them are equipped to understand culture and the past with unusual breadth.

At the University of East Anglia, which has a long-standing reputation in both art history and history, this four-year programme includes a year abroad, giving you the opportunity to study in a different academic environment and to encounter different national traditions of both historical and art historical scholarship. The year abroad is particularly valuable for history of art, which benefits enormously from direct engagement with collections and sites in other countries. Across the degree you will develop your skills in primary source analysis, visual analysis, historical argument and research, engaging with history from the ancient world to the modern period and with art history from medieval to contemporary.

UEA's connection to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts on campus provides a distinctive resource for art history students.

Graduates from history and history of art programmes go on to work in museums, galleries and auction houses, in arts journalism and criticism, in heritage management, in education, in publishing and in the civil service. Many pursue postgraduate study in history, art history, curatorship, museum studies or conservation. The combination of historical knowledge, visual literacy and the research and writing skills that both disciplines develop is valued across the cultural sector and well beyond it.