The Intellectual History strand of the MPhil in History takes an interdisciplinary approach, with a chronological and global reach.

The MPhil in History has a sustained period devoted to archival research and writing, and is designed to give you a thorough training in historical research, improve your ability to conceptualise and engage with historical problems, and enlarge your understanding of the historical and historiographical context in which your own research is set. All strands of the MPhil can serve as either free-standing graduate qualifications, or as a springboard to doctoral study. Students wishing to proceed to doctoral study will be encouraged to develop their doctoral proposals during the first few months of the second year. Skills training and option-choice are flexible and open-ended, to allow you to gain the knowledge and training needed to complete your research project.

You will have the opportunity to study thinkers and ideas from the fourth to the twenty-first centuries, in diverse transnational geographical contexts. The course is designed to encourage you to work in and between areas such as Global Intellectual History, the History of Scholarship, the History of Science, the History of Art, Historiography and the History of Political Ideas.

Oxford is home to one of the largest communities of intellectual historians in the world, with expertise in every major area of Intellectual History, supported by world-class resources.