Durham historians explore a vast range of past human experience across the world, from Late Antiquity to the twenty-first century. We engage in collaborations across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences to develop innovative research methods and techniques. And we make critical interventions to inform policy and public debate, whether to draw lessons from the past or challenge the use and abuse of history in the present.

History Department Research Seminar

Wednesday 7 May 2025, 3.30–5pm, ER142

Siobhan Lambert-Hurley (Sheffield) A Muslim Guide to Healthy Eating: Food, Diet and Modernism in Princely India

Wednesday 21 May 2025, 3.30–5pm, ER142

Ling Zhang (Cambridge) Rocks that Made Worlds: Doing Environmental History by Following Things

Wednesday 18 June 2025, 4–5.30pm, ER153

Caroline Humfress (St Andrews) Ensouled Law in Late(ish) Antiquity

Thursday 26 June 2025, 3.30–5pm, ER140 (with CVAC)

Amanda Vickery (QMUL) Making and Visualising British Beauty: Provincial Women and Miss Great Britain, 1945–1970

Please contact tom.b.hamilton@durham.ac.uk with any questions.

Research Clusters

Our History Department research clusters develop the Transformative Humanities framework of the Arts and Humanities Faculty. We have a special thematic focus on:

• Economic and Social History; 
• Environmental History and Urban History; 
• History on the Margins; 
• Late Antiquity
• Museums, Archives, and Heritage
• North American Connections
• North-East History
• Political Cultures;
• Science, Technology, and Medicine; and
• Thinking East Asia.

We also work closely with colleagues across the university, including via the Institute for Medical Humanities and the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, as well as the Centre for African History, the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, and the Centre for Visual Arts and Cultures.