History

History is the discipline that allows us to understand the present by making sense of the past. It trains you to work carefully with evidence, to evaluate competing interpretations, and to construct persuasive accounts of how events, structures, and ideas have combined to produce the world we inhabit. These analytical and communicative skills are widely valued and genuinely transferable, but the subject also carries its own intrinsic reward: the ability to see how differently human beings have organised their lives across time and place.

At Aberystwyth University, this four-year, full-time programme is built around an integrated year studying abroad at one of the Department's international partner universities. You will spend your first and second years studying history at Aberystwyth, where the Department has strong international research and teaching partnerships, and then in your third year you will enrol at a partner institution overseas. This year abroad allows you to deepen and broaden your historical studies, immerse yourself in another culture, and potentially study additional subjects alongside history, before returning to Aberystwyth to complete your final year.

The experience is academically and personally transformative, adding a comparative and cross-cultural dimension that domestic study alone cannot provide. You will engage with the full breadth of historical scholarship, covering diverse periods, places, and themes while developing your skills in research, source analysis, and historical writing.

Graduates of History work across law, journalism, the civil service, policy, education, museums and heritage, publishing, international affairs, and business. The discipline's training in evidence, argument, and critical reading transfers across any profession in which those qualities are valued. The year abroad adds the additional asset of international experience and cross-cultural confidence.

Many graduates continue to postgraduate study in history, heritage management, law, or related fields.