History

Research overview

Staff in the History department research political, economic, social, cultural, religious, medical, maritime, military, humanitarian, environmental and international history. We range in time from the early medieval period to the late 20th century. We have particular strengths in the history of Britain and continental Europe, but also focus on the history of the United States, Africa, India, China and Latin America. Our PhD programmes are taught at both Streatham and Penryn, and supervision can be offered across both campuses.

Our research centres are focal points of our research environment for both staff and PGR students, organising seminar series, workshops and research events throughout the academic year where postgraduate students meet with staff and peers to learn, discuss and present research.

A summary of our main areas of research are listed below. The History Research webpages provide more comprehensive details about current research projects. Details on individual staff research interests and publications can be found on the History staff profiles pages.

Our PhD students are funded by organisations including the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council, Wellcome Trust, Commonwealth Scholarships, University of Exeter Global Excellence Scholars China Scholarship Council, and doctoral scholarships attached to major research grants.

Early modern studies

The Centre for Early Modern Studies fosters interdisciplinary links between colleagues working in the early Modern era both from the Department and across the University, and provides a home for the flourishing Early Modern Seminar, which combines papers from staff and research students and organises major conferences. Colleagues involved in the Centre are engaged in research on all aspects of the period between c.1500 and 1800 and expertise spreads from Britain and Europe to the Middle East and North America.

Key areas of activity include:

• religious culture
• social and economic relations
• political and intellectual thought
• gender and sexuality
• space, landscape and national identities
• the history of the book
• theatre and performance.

Imperial and global history

The Centre for Imperial and Global History brings together the strong research expertise of the University's eminent imperial historians. It comprises of one of the largest groups of imperial and global historians currently working in the UK. 

Our strengths in comparing empires and the experiences of empire address a number of leading research themes:

• Writing Postcolonial Histories: Methods and Approaches
• (De-)Colonizing Bodies and Minds
• Race, Ethnicity and Migration
• (Post-) Colonial Violence: Law, Rights and Repression
• Global Humanitarianism, Human Rights and Development
• Imperial, Anti-Imperial and Global Political Economies
• Networks and Negotiations · Globalising Socialism

Maritime history

The Centre for Maritime Historical Studies seeks to promote research into economic, social, political, naval and environmental aspects of the British maritime past from the earliest times to the present day. This is the oldest established centre for this specialism in a British university.

• British maritime history from the Middle Ages to today
• Business history and maritime trade
• Port cities and communities
• Mariners' welfare and education
• Naval history from the Middle Ages to the present day, in particular, the connections between naval, political, social, economic and other histories
• Naval leadership from the late-seventeenth century to the mid-twentieth century
• British naval administration and logistics
• Mediterranean maritime history from the middle ages to the eighteenth century
• African maritime history and African port cities.

The Centre holds termly research seminars (in conjunction with the Society for Nautical Research), an annual international Maritime History Conference and a twice-yearly Strategic Policy Studies Group symposium (with associated publication).

Medical history

The Centre for Medical History draws together scholars from a wide range of disciplines across the University to promote the study of medicine in a social and historical perspective. Centre staff are willing to provide supervision for an MPhil/PhD in Medical History in many areas of research, including:

• English medical history, 1500–1800
• environment and medicine in the modern period
• gender and the family
• occupational health and industrial diseases
• history of psychiatry
• history of sex and sexuality
• history of stress
• history of global public health and family planning

Violence Studies

The Centre for Histories of Violence and Conflict brings together a number of internationally renowned academics working on:

• political violence and its social consequences
• changing ideas of permissible violence - in conflicts, between combatants and non-combatants, among social groups.
• regimes of punishment and the treatment of prisoners of war and political detainees
• concepts of 'everyday violence'
• violence, social protest and rights
• violence and emotions
• violence and memory
• insurgencies and civil wars
• 'terrorism' and 'weapons of the weak'
• conflicts of decolonization
• evidence of violence in archaeology and landscapes
• violence and environmental destruction
• violence as an instrument of global politics.

Inter-disciplinary in approach, the Centre supports research and teaching on the effects of armed conflict and punitive violence on societies, social groups, and cultures throughout history.

Medieval studies

Staff members of the Centre for Medieval Studies are engaged in a wide range of research projects, singly or in collaboration with scholars from other institutions. Listed below are our major funded projects currently in progress.

• Anarchy? War and Status in Twelfth-Century Landscapes of Conflict
• Architecture and Asceticism: Cultural Interaction between Syria and Georgia in Late Antiquity
• Bishop John Grandisson of Exeter (1327-69)
• Magic in Malta 1605: The Moorish Slave Sellem Bin Al-Sheikh Mansur and the Roman Inquisition
• The Past in its Place: Histories of Memory in English and Welsh Locales
• The Works of Guillaume de Machaut

See also

• South Asia Research Centre
• Exeter Centre for Latin American Studies
• Centre for Environmental Arts and Humanities
• Institute of Cornish Studies
• Egenis: the Centre for the Study of Life Sciences and Society