History (MPhil / PhD)

OUR RESEARCH CULTURE

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 Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide, 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. The Department also offers PhD thesis-writing workshops and methodological masterclasses, in which historians discuss how they produce their work and overcome particular challenges. Increasingly Birkbeck is funding student-organised conferences and sponsoring special courses that teach non-English languages for reading and research. Research students also have access to events offered by the Bloomsbury Postgraduate Skills Network, which includes UCL, King’s College London, LSE and SOAS, among others.

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.

Student-run website Birkbeck History Research Students' Forum contains information about conferences and events, job opportunities, etc.
Through our international links, it is now possible for Birkbeck PhD History students to visit the following partner institutions: Columbia University, USA; Queen's University, Canada; Università di Pisa, University of Verona and European University Institute (EUI), Florence, Italy (one-term exchange). Research students from these institutions may also spend six months studying at Birkbeck.