History
History is the discipline that explains where we are now by examining how we got here. As Queen's University Belfast puts it, 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? Historians answer these questions by reaching back to the Roman empire, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the great modern revolutions across Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia. To study history is to engage with the full range of human experience, to read its traces in documents, images, and material culture, and to develop the analytical skills to understand why things happened as they did rather than otherwise.
Queen's University Belfast's three-year full-time History degree has a typical entry tariff of 136 points. From their first year, students are trusted to make choices and range widely across histories in time and place, taught in small groups by expert historians. You will develop skills in primary source analysis, archival research, historical argument, and the ability to situate events and structures within their broader contexts.
The range of the programme, spanning different periods, regions, and themes, means that you can follow your interests while developing a genuinely broad historical literacy. Belfast's own history gives particular resonance to certain questions of conflict, identity, and political change, and the university's location adds a distinctive dimension to your experience of the discipline.
History graduates work in education, journalism, the civil service, law, heritage and museum work, archives, public policy, politics, broadcasting, publishing, and a wide range of other professions where the ability to research, analyse, and communicate clearly is valued. The analytical rigour and evidential care that history develops are transferable across virtually any career that requires careful thinking. Many students continue to postgraduate study in history, area studies, archiving, or public policy, or proceed to law conversion courses or teacher training.