Modern Languages and History

Modern languages and history is a combination that approaches the past from two complementary angles. History provides the narrative and analytical frameworks for understanding how societies have changed over time, how events unfold within particular contexts, and what causes and consequences look like in human affairs. Languages give you direct access to the primary sources, the literature, the politics, and the culture of the countries whose histories you are studying, and they equip you to think about the past from within the linguistic world of its participants rather than only from the outside.

At the University of Reading, this four-year full-time programme allows you to develop real proficiency in a modern language while also building a rigorous and broad historical education. Reading has strong research traditions in both European history and modern languages, and the combination of close linguistic attention and historical analysis produces a distinctively rich intellectual experience. You will study language and literature alongside historical periods and themes that may span medieval through modern history, developing research skills that include both the reading of historical sources and the linguistic competence to access them in the original.

Language and history are deeply entwined: understanding a country's history is essential for understanding its language, and vice versa.

The analytical and writing skills developed by this combination are demanding and broadly transferable. You learn to read complex sources carefully, to construct extended arguments, to situate events in their contexts, and to communicate ideas clearly to diverse audiences. These are capabilities that translate into many professional settings beyond the academic.

Graduates in modern languages and history move into careers in teaching, the civil service, journalism, law, publishing, heritage, museum work, international business, diplomatic and consular roles, and the cultural sector. The language specialism opens international career options that a history degree alone does not provide. Postgraduate study in history, European studies, international relations, area studies, or translation is a well-established route for those who want to deepen either the historical or the linguistic dimension of their expertise.