History at Oxford
Medieval and modern history has been studied at Oxford for longer than at almost any other university: a Regius Professor of Modern History was first appointed in 1724, and undergraduate examinations began in 1850.
The History Faculty has more than 90 permanent academic staff. Of these, 15 are statutory Professors, or Readers. The majority of permanent academic staff, are joint appointees whose teaching responsibilities encompass both the Faculty and the individual college of appointment.
The Faculty also encompasses at any one time a number of historians employed by colleges – College Lecturers and short-term Junior Research Fellows – as well as those on fixed-term employment with the Faculty: Departmental Lecturers providing teaching for postholders on research leave, and research assistants on funded research projects. Its wider membership includes colleagues in a number of other faculties and departments across the University who work as historians or in closely cognate disciplines.
The University of Oxford is one of the world's most encompassing centres for the study of history. The faculty has nearly twelve hundred undergraduates, and almost five hundred graduate students attracted from around the world.
The Chair of the Faculty Board from 2018, is: Professor John Watts
Professor of Later Medieval History, Corpus Christi College
