History

History is the discipline through which we make sense of the past, not as a fixed record of what happened but as a complex, contested, and perpetually reinterpreted body of evidence, argument, and narrative. Historians do not simply learn facts; they learn to ask questions of sources, to evaluate competing accounts, to understand why things happened as they did and why people thought and acted as they did in different times and places. These are skills of critical thinking, careful reading, and structured argument that are applicable well beyond the study of the past itself.

At the University of Chichester, this three-year full-time degree covers a wide chronological range, from the medieval period through to the present day. You will engage with political history, military history, social history, and cultural history, developing an understanding of how different approaches to the discipline illuminate different aspects of the past. You will work with primary sources as well as scholarly secondary literature, learning to situate documents and artefacts in their historical context and to construct interpretations that can be defended with evidence.

The breadth of the programme ensures that you develop both depth in specific areas and a sense of how periods and themes connect across time.

The skills that history develops, close reading, critical evaluation of evidence, clear and structured writing, and the capacity to manage complex bodies of information, are highly transferable and valued by employers across many sectors.

Graduates from history degrees work in education and teaching, the civil service, heritage and museums, publishing and journalism, law, politics, business, and the third sector. The degree is a strong preparation for postgraduate study in history, public history, archives and records management, or law. Many employers, particularly in the public sector and professional services, specifically value the analytical rigour that a humanities degree like history develops.