Student Experience

The History Experience at Dundee

Field trips are offered on several modules, and there have been recent excursions to Madrid, Prague and North America

At Dundee we have a ‘hands on’ approach to doing history, and part of the joy of being a historian is reading documents from the past. From your first year you will be encouraged to use primary sources held in our Archives Department, and there are annual prizes for students who demonstrate archival research in their essays.

All of the teaching at Dundee is closely related to the research of staff. What lecturers are working on, the documents they are discovering and using in their writing, all find their way into the classroom. In this way our teaching is comes from the cutting-edge historical enquiry and is also informed by the debate this sometimes provokes.

What you will study

We offer a wide spectrum of expertise and different approaches to teaching and writing history. Scottish history is taught in wider British and Irish contexts and North American and European history from the seventeenth century down to almost contemporary events.

We are interested in looking at history differently, and from new perspectives, whether that is a global approach to history or the study of gender and women’s history or local and military history. You will do survey modules covering large tracts of time, and as you develop as a trained historian you will do in-depth Special Subjects focusing on areas of staff expertise. Eventually, you may even opt to do your own research project on a subject of your own choosing.

Outside the Classroom

And studying history is not just about books and documents. We can know something about the past by visiting and studying buildings and their architecture. And feature films and film documentaries are also important sources for historical ideas and a focus for our study at Dundee too.

Away from the library and classroom there is the vibrant History Society, which supported by staff and students organises trips to places of historical interest, and social events like pub quizzes and parties.

Looking to your future

But above all doing history at Dundee you are here to learn to think critically about the world from different historical perspectives.

Our aim is to train you to think like a historian. You will be able to formulate and to ask questions about the past and importantly to have the skills to answer them on your own terms.

At Dundee we want you to be an independent thinker, and to bring the analytical and communication skills of the trained historian to the workplace you choose after you leave us.