History (PhD / MPhil) - 2013/2014 entry

A research degree offers you the opportunity to acquire a highly advanced set of conceptual skills developed in the pursuit of new knowledge, which can be applied within or beyond an academic or scholarly context. Research training in any academic discipline helps to channel creativity into critical innovatory reasoning. The legitimate authority of original, independent research depends upon persuasive analytical arguments supported by critically evaluated evidence.

We provide a supportive context for research in the following areas: ancient Greece and Roman social and cultural history; later Roman archaeology; late antiquity; history of medieval societies and cultures; British social, cultural and political history since 1400; French history since 1400; Italian history since 1500; the cultural history of early modern cities, especially London and Venice; the history of ideas from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries; Russian history since 1800; nineteenth- and twentieth-century American social and cultural history; Balkan history and the history of the Ottoman Empire and its successor states; West and Southern Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the history of Japan and East Asia; the history of science, medicine and psychoanalysis in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the cultural history of death, warfare, race, gender and sexuality.

Find out more about our current MPhil/PhD students and their areas of research.

You will find the British Museum and the British Library just a few minutes' walk away from Birkbeck. Other nearby specialist centres of research include the University of London Institute of Historical Research, the School of Oriental and African Studies, the German Historical Institute, the Warburg Institute, the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, the City of London Record Offices, the India Office Library and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. The Public Record Office, the British Newspaper Library, the Imperial War Museum and other archives are within easy reach by public transport.

Study resources also include a regular work-in-progress seminar for research students and staff, and various courses on ancillary skills, including how to read medieval and early modern documents, how to locate sources in various fields, languages and computing. Besides over 30 regular research seminars at the Institute of Historical Research, there are also numerous specialist lectures and talks at neighbouring institutions during term-time.

We are internationally recognised for innovative research, focusing on the interaction between cultural, social and political history, ranging from antiquity to the twenty-first century, and covering Britain, Europe, Africa, Asia and North America.

Staff include Joanna Bourke, Orlando Figes, Michael Hunter, Matthew Innes, Daniel Pick, John Arnold, Lucy Riall, Catharine Edwards, John Henderson and Frank Trentmann.

Birkbeck welcomes all students interested in beginning a research degree. We combine a unique expertise in catering for part-time students with considerable success in attracting full-time students from the UK and overseas.

There are many advantages to be derived from undertaking postgraduate research at Birkbeck:

• you will gain from contact with leading specialists in your chosen field of research
• you will broaden your range of academic and intellectual contacts
• you will significantly widen your general experience of academic life and institutions
• working with a supervisor who is an internationally-renowned specialist in the field should be a major stimulus to developing your work and infusing it with fresh ideas and new approaches

The School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy is an exciting, cosmopolitan and intellectually stimulating environment in which to pursue research. Our community of research students includes full-time and part-time students. In recent years, a number have successfully applied for funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as well as other sources.

Many of our students come from outside the UK. Some are studying for a research degree out of personal interest, while others are undertaking research with the aim of pursuing an academic career in due course

Before deciding to pursue a research degree, you should ideally draft an independent proposal for your intended area of research (read our guide to writing a research proposal). We also strongly advise that, before submitting your application, you informally approach and establish contact with a potential supervisor.

Find out more about the Department of History's MPhil/PhD application process.

• Fred Anscombe, BA, PhD: The Ottoman Empire; the Balkans and the Middle East in Ottoman and post-Ottoman times.
• Dr Sunil Amrith: Modern Indian and Southeast Asian history.
• Professor John Arnold, BA, PhD: Britain and Europe in the high and later Middle Ages.
• Professor Joanna Bourke, BA, MA, PhD, FRHistS: Modern British and Irish history; gender and masculinity; military history; the history of the emotions; sexual violence.
• Sean Brady, BA, MA, PhD: Gender, sexuality, politics and religion in Britain and Ireland after 1800.
• Matthew Cook, BA, PhD: Urban history, especially the history of London; histories of sexuality and gender; Victorian literature and culture, especially Fin de Siècle; lesbian and gay writing and film.
• Filippo de Vivo, BA, DEA, PhD: Cultural history of early modern Italy; early modern cities, particularly Venice.
• Professor David Feldman, MA, PhD, FRHistS: Modern British history; history of social policy; immigration and ethnicity; Jewish history.
• Professor Orlando Figes, BA, PhD: Modern Russian history; history of peasantry; Russian cultural history.
• Dr Caroline Goodson: Medieval Archaeology, Medieval history, architecture, and archaeology, in particular Southern Italy in the early middle ages.
• Professor Vanessa A Harding, MA, PhD, FRHistS: History of London; English social and economic history 1300–1700; history of death and the family 1300–1700.
• Professor John Henderson, BA, PhD: Social history of late medieval and early modern Italy, particularly Florence; history of plague; late medieval and early modern hospitals and medical practice.
• Dr Caroline Humfress: Late antiquity 300–700, particularly religion and theology; history of law, particularly Roman law.
• Professor Michael CW Hunter, MA, DPhil, FSA, FRHistS: Early modern intellectual history; history of science; Robert Boyle.
• Professor Matthew Innes, MA, PhD, FRHistS: Early medieval Europe 700–1100, including England and the continent; Vikings in Western Europe; historiography and uses of the past; land, law and lordship.
• Dr Julia Laite: Modern British History.
• Dr Julia Lovell: Modern Asian History.
• Professor Daniel Pick, MA, PhD: Modern European and British history; psychoanalysis and history.
• Dr April Pudsey: ancient historical demography and population history; social and economic history of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt.
• Dr Jessica Reinisch: Modern European and German History.
• Professor Lucy Riall, BSc(Econ), MSc, PhD: Modern European history, especially Italy; national identity and political leadership; Sicilian social history.
• Jan Ruger, BA, PhD: Comparative history of modern Europe, particularly Britain and Germany; national identity and political culture; political and cultural role of the navy.
• Hilary Sapire, BA, PhD: History of urbanisation; history of disease and colonial medicine; history of Africa (particularly South Africa).
• Professor Chandak Sengoopta, MD, MA, PhD: Intellectual and cultural history of science and medicine, particularly in Britain, central Europe and colonial settings; history of the body and gender.
• Professor Naoko Shimazu, BA, MPhil, DPhil, FRHistS: Modern Japanese history; international history of East Asia; Western perceptions of Japan.
• Laura Stewart, BA, PhD: Early modern British history; power and authority in seventeenth-century Britain.
• Professor Julian Swann, BA, PhD: Early modern French history; history of the French parlements and estates; early modern nobilities.
• Professor Frank Trentmann, BA, MA, PhD: Modern Britain and Europe; political culture; civil society; consumption; transnationalism.
• Nik Wachsmann, BSc(Econ), MPhil, FRHistS: Modern German history; Weimar and Nazi Germany; the history of anti-semitism and the Holocaust; criminology, policing, deviance, punishment and imprisonment.
• Professor Jerry White: History of modern London.

You should decide an area and subject of research and, ideally, have identified a potential supervisor within the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology. Remember, it is important to have a supervisor who will provide an overview of your chosen field. Candidates are welcome to contact a potential supervisor for advice on their research proposal, and are encouraged to do so. Candidates may apply for full-time or part-time study mode – part-time study mode is open to UK, EU, EEA and Swiss nationals. Fees for EU nationals are charged at the UK home student rate. International students may apply for full-time study mode only.

Suitable candidates will be interviewed by a panel of the Research Committee, which will include the prospective supervisor. During the application process, candidates may also contact the department for advice on 020 7079 0689 or email admin@history.bbk.ac.uk

Recent history research topics at Birkbeck

• Socialist utopias
• Chinese railroad labourers in mid-late nineteenth century
• The cultural history of music in the French Revolution
• Technologies of social knowledge: scientific methodologies of conceptualising poverty in Britain, late nineteenth-early twnetieth century
• The development of botany in sixteenth-century Italy and its influence on the theory and practice of therapy
• Demonic possession in Early Modern England
• The healing of scrofula - or the King's Evil - by the royal touch during the early modern period
• The History of the Civil Rights League of South Africa (1948–1994)
• The Burgundian nobility in the eighteenth century
• The development of the ceramic industry and exchange networks in the province of Dacia by establishing a Roman Fabrics Reference collection
• War neurosis in the civilian population in Second World War Britain
• Terrorists and counter-terrorists in Hollywood film and television of the last two decades
• The SS personnel of the Dachau concentration camp 1933–1939
• Belsen medical students
• The political and cultural career of Philip Sydney, Lord Viscount Lisle, Third Earl of Leicester, 1619–1698
• Medical books and the distribution of medical knowledge in the early modern period.

Find out more about our current MPhil/PhD students and their research topics

• You can apply, and start studying, at any time during the year.