Swansea’s History Department is one of the UK’s largest and admits around 250 new undergraduates every year to study history.  The student body is made up of people from all parts of the UK along with a growing cohort of international students from European and North American universities. 

The teaching staff is similarly diverse and includes academics from Canada, Germany, the USA and the UK.  With 23 full-time lecturers, we are able to offer a rich and varied menu of historical subjects that matches our diverse character.  We are all active researchers and writers.  So you will be exploring history with national and international experts in their fields of study.  If you wish to study other subjects alongside history, there are many opportunities within the Schools of Humanities and Arts, and our modular system encourages a flexible approach to study.

We are committed to offering those who study with us an exciting and rigorous education.  We try to ensure that all our students leave not just with degree that will be of advantage in the job market, but also with a life-long passion for history, a better understanding of how the past has shaped the world they live in, and with memories of an excellent undergraduate experience.

The research activity of the History Department is characterized by its very wide chronological and geographical range and by the variety of its theoretical concerns and approaches. This stems from our passion and expertise as individual researchers. The Department has nurtured a long tradition of distinguished scholars whose research excellence has been recognized in a variety of ways, including the election of two members of the Department as Fellows of the British Academy in recent years.  Information about the Department's many research activities can be viewed here.

Swansea University itself was founded in 1920 and boasts a spectacular seaside campus with sweeping views across Swansea Bay and the beautiful Gower peninsula.  The campus is a mix of the modern and the traditional and includes the historic Singleton Abbey, once the focal point of the estate of nineteenth-century copper magnates. The estate’s magnificent parklands flank the campus, meaning the university is literally sandwiched between the blue of the sea and the green of the park.  Many students live in the neighbouring residential areas, where they are in easy walking distance of both the city centre and the university.

In 2005 the University won the Times Higher Education Supplement’s prestigious UK ‘student experience’ of the year award and it was shortlisted again for the award in 2006.

The history department is located on the first floor of the James Callaghan Building - see the campus map.

The history department is part of the University's School of Humanities.