Ancient and Modern History

Number of places at Balliol

1 or 2, but there is no maximum quota

Subject information

Please see the History Faculty pages. See also the Classics Faculty for more on Ancient History at Oxford.

Course requirements

For information on what subjects you need to study, please see the University’s entrance requirements pages.

Candidates will be expected to show a serious interest in the ancient world. An A-level in Ancient History, Latin, Greek, or Classical Civilisation is desirable but not necessary.

College requirements

A-level or equivalent (e.g. IB Higher Level) in History.

Admissions/Selection criteria

For information on how applicants are assessed, please visit the departmental admissions and applications page, and the introduction to the History Aptitude Test.

Ancient and Modern History at Balliol

Balliol College has a dynamic tradition of Ancient and Modern History. The degree offers a substantial choice of papers from both halves of the course and also the opportunity to begin or continue language training in Greek or Latin.

Tutors

Lesley Abrams teaches early medieval history and has published on political, cultural, and social aspects of the Viking Age, as well as more general studies of conversion to Christianity.
Martin Conway teaches European and World History of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and has published on themes of inter-war fascism, collaboration, and the re-establishment of democracy in Europe after 1945.
Alison Rosenblitt teaches across the Roman history periods: 241-146 BC; Republic in Crisis: 146-46 BC; Rome, Italy and Empire from Caesar to Claudius: 46 BC –AD 54; Cicero and Catiline; Tacitus and Tiberius; Cicero: Politics & Thought; Augustan Rome; Sallust’s Jugurtha.
Simon Skinner teaches modern British history, and has published on politics and religion in early Victorian Britain.
Rosalind Thomas teaches Greek and Roman history. She has written books on oral tradition, literacy, and orality in the Greek world, and on the ‘father of history’, Herodotus, and connections with Greek medicine and science; her research interests include political, social, and cultural history.