History and Politics

History and politics is a combination that places two of the most important approaches to understanding human society side by side. History provides the narrative, the evidence, and the interpretive methods to understand how the world has come to be as it is, tracing the origins of political institutions, ideologies, conflicts, and social arrangements across time. Politics provides the analytical frameworks to understand power: how it is organised, legitimised, exercised, and contested in the present.

Studied together, they produce graduates who can situate current political events in deeper historical contexts and who understand history as something made by political actors with interests, ideologies, and strategies.

At Goldsmiths College, this three-year full-time programme is taught within an institution known for its critical, interdisciplinary approach to the social sciences and humanities. Goldsmiths has a strong tradition of engaging with questions of culture, identity, inequality, and power, and those concerns shape how both history and politics are taught here. You will study political theory and ideology, comparative politics, international relations, and British and contemporary political history, alongside historical content that may span periods from the nineteenth century through to the recent past.

Research methods, source criticism, and the construction of extended analytical arguments are skills developed throughout.

The combination of historical depth and political analysis produces a distinctive kind of graduate: one who resists simplistic narratives about the present, who understands causation as complex and contested, and who can engage seriously with the evidence behind political claims.

Graduates in history and politics work in journalism, the civil service, politics and policy, law, education, broadcasting, the charity sector, international organisations, and general management. The analytical and writing skills developed by this combination are valued across virtually all sectors. Postgraduate study in history, politics, international relations, public policy, or law is a natural continuation for those who want to specialise or develop academic careers.