History & Politics

Number of places at Balliol

2 or more

Subject information

See the course page on the History Faculty’s website.

See also, more generally, the Faculty of History website, and the Department of Politics website.

Course requirements

Please see the entrance requirements on the undergraduate admissions website.

College requirements

Candidates are expected to study History to A-level or an equivalent level.

Admissions/Selection criteria

For information on how applicants are assessed, see the Faculty of History website.

History and Politics at Balliol

The joint school was inaugurated a decade ago and draws on two of the College’s best-known and established subjects.

Balliol has long enjoyed an outstanding reputation for History teaching and research. The College’s investment in History is reflected in its provision of four Fellows in the subject, and a Library whose holdings in the subject are second to none. The College’s coverage of the syllabus is correspondingly wide, and there is no attempt to steer undergraduates towards one option rather than another. Balliol History and Politics students participate in the exciting opportunities for archival research provided by the undergraduate thesis. Between one-quarter and one-third of our undergraduates typically proceed to postgraduate work in Oxford or elsewhere, and the College maintains a thriving community of graduate students in History. Others move on into careers in the law, the civil service, journalism, television, and many other fields.

Balliol was, moreover, the birthplace of the degree of Philosophy, Politics and Economics in the 1920s, which is how Politics began as an academic subject at Oxford, and we remain a major centre for the study of Politics in the University, and one of few colleges to have two full Politics Fellows. This means both that students of History and Politics at Balliol are part of a substantial body of students with a collective identity and activities to match and that our own Fellows can cover a wide range of papers ‘in-house’. The College has produced a succession of British Prime Ministers and politicians: H.H. Asquith, Harold Macmillan, Edward Heath, Denis Healey, Roy Jenkins, and, more recently, Boris Johnson, Yvette Cooper and James Purnell all studied at Balliol. But Politics here, like the College as a whole, is also notable for its international character, and for its interest in global or international issues. We welcome applications from students with a genuine interest in combining the demands of the humanities and the social sciences in this joint-school.

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.

Sudhir Hazareesingh, Fellow in Politics. Sudhir teaches the Introduction to Politics course, and International Relations; he has published on a variety of subjects in post-revolutionary French political history, including communism, republicanism, bonapartism and the freemasonry; among his recent books are studies on Napoleon and Charles de Gaulle.

Simon Skinner teaches modern British history, and has published on politics and religion in early Victorian Britain.

Adam Swift, Fellow in Politics and Sociology. Adam teaches Theory of Politics, Marxism and Sociological Theory and has published books on a range of issues in political philosophy, most recently on social justice, equality of opportunity and education.