There are many intellectual justifications for the study of History.  These include: the need for a society to understand its own past if it is to guide its future; the philosophically respectable argument that all knowledge is, in some form, historical; and the enrichment of human culture in the present. In practice most of those who choose History at university do so because they so greatly enjoy it. That is also why we teach it.

History provides employment opportunities in a wide range of areas. Past graduates in History from Trinity have gone into the law (including both the Bar and Magic Circle law firms); into the civil service, sometimes at the very highest level; the media, old and new, as columnists, editors, or broadcasters; financial services (and their regulation); and industry—as well, of course, as becoming teachers of history at both school and university level, and historical researchers. History provides an unparalleled intellectual training and a stimulus to the imagination: it enables one to put expertise into its human context.  It also teaches the practical skill of absorbing, organising and presenting large amounts of knowledge in fluent, accurate, and eloquent writing.

Trinity has a great historical tradition, as the names of T.B. Macaulay, Lord Acton, F.W. Maitland, G.M. Trevelyan, Jack Gallagher, E.H. Carr, Sir John Elliot, Norman Stone, Patrick Collinson, and Dominic Lieven all testify. Trinity historians have been at the forefront of a range of fields: the study of colonial and post-colonial history; of the late antique world; of intellectual history and political thought.

Fellows in History at Trinity

The College has numerous fellows in many different areas of the subject. Current Directors of Studies (who are most closely involved in teaching Trinity undergraduates and guiding their work more generally) include Dr Chris Jeppesen, who studies modern British history and researches the history and legacies of enslavement at Trinity College; Dr Jessica Patterson, who studies the intellectual history of relations between Britain and South Asia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Prof. Samita Sen, who works on global economic history and the history of modern South Asia; and Dr Richard Serjeantson, who studies British and European intellectual history between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

Other historians in the College include Prof. Joya Chatterji, FBA (a prize-winning historian of twentieth-century South Asia); Prof. Boyd Hilton, FBA (a world-renowned writer on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British political history); Prof. Sachiko Kusukawa (a prize-winning historian of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century history of science); Prof. Peter Sarris (a noted scholar of late antique Byzantium); Prof. Teresa Webber, FBA (a leading expert in medieval palaeography).

Trinity also regularly elects Historians as Junior Research Fellows. These brilliant younger scholars, at the outset of distinguished careers, often join in teaching our undergraduates. At present they include Dr Giulia Bellato (early medieval Italy); Dr Meeraal Shafaat-Bokharee (modern South Asia); Dr Wallace Teska (twentieth-century francophone Africa); and Dr Roseanna Webster (the Spanish Civil War).

Trinity College is thus unrivalled in Cambridge in terms of the chronological span and geographical range covered by its historians—which all makes for an exciting and diverse learning environment.

The Course

The History Tripos offers a very wide range of options and notwithstanding the range of expertise available at Trinity, no single college can provide specialist teaching in all its corners. Most of our students will therefore, from time to time, be sent outside Trinity for supervisions, but we can promise expert tuition in all fields. We are also keen to foster our students’ linguistic skills, and will arrange teaching for those wishing to improve their command of a foreign language or acquire a new one.

We expect our undergraduates to work hard. But we also think that History is fun, and don’t want our students to be solemn about it. With an undergraduate intake of about ten a year, as well as several graduate students working for the degrees of MPhil and PhD, historians are an important presence in the College. There is a strong History Society which hosts visiting speakers and holds a notable Annual Dinner. Trinity’s library facilities are the best of any college in the University, and we actively encourage our undergraduates to help us develop the collection to meet the requirements of the papers they are taking.

Grants, awards, and prizes

Trinity also has a wide range of awards and grants available to its historians. There is the Lapsley Fund for Medieval Studies; the Crawford Travelling Scholarship; the Projects Fund; and a number of Language Bursaries to facilitate linguistic study abroad. There are also exchange schemes to the École Normale Supérieur in Paris and to the University of Chicago and Rice University in the United States. These generous funds provide unmatched opportunities for students to travel for pleasure, profit, and historical inquiry, whether to Byzantium, Bayeux, Bangladesh, or the local County Records Office. There are also a number of generous History Prizes. The Bowen, Greaves, and James Webb (History of Ideas) prizes are awarded on the basis of essays; the Earl of Derby and Louisa Oriel prizes are also awarded to historians who distinguish themselves in Tripos examinations.  At the same time students will, of course, be able to take advantage of the extraordinarily high quality of accommodation and general facilities that the College offers.

The Robson History Prize is held annually with the purpose of encouraging ambitious and talented Year 12 or Lower Sixth students who may be considering applying to university to read History or a related discipline.