History
History opens a window onto the full range of human experience, asking how the world came to be as it is and what we can learn from the ways in which people have faced the challenges of their own times. At Anglia Ruskin University, this three-year full-time programme focuses on the histories of Britain, Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world from 1500 onwards, taking you through five centuries of extraordinary change. You will encounter major historical figures and engage with the epoch-making transitions that shaped the modern world: the rise and fall of empires, the industrial revolution and the social transformations it brought, the age of revolutions from the American and French to the anti-colonial movements of the twentieth century, and the technological changes that have accelerated the pace of historical change in ways that earlier periods could not have anticipated.
You will work with primary sources, learning to read historical documents, images, and material evidence with care and critical attention. You will engage with the debates that historians have had and continue to have about the causes and significance of major events and processes, developing your own well-reasoned positions through close reading and argument. Writing clearly and persuasively about complex historical questions is a central skill that the programme develops throughout.
The abilities you build through historical study are genuinely transferable across many professions: the capacity to evaluate evidence, to construct arguments, to understand how context shapes meaning, and to communicate clearly under the pressure of a deadline. These are qualities that employers in law, the civil service, journalism, education, and management consistently seek.
Graduates pursue careers in education, journalism, publishing, the heritage sector, the civil service, law, and the arts. Many go on to postgraduate study in history or related disciplines. History is a degree that teaches you to think, and that matters across a wide range of paths.