Program Overview

Our joint honours BA History and International Relations course enables you to address today's key issues and investigate their roots in the past. Explore both history and international relations and gain an understanding of how they influence one another.

Discover a thousand years of history whilst experiencing all the specialist areas on offer at the University of Reading. The History Department's expertise covers a wide range of regions, from Europe and Africa to America, South Asia and the Middle East. Module choices cover diverse periods and topics, from the Crusades to Cold War Berlin and from Medieval Magic to the Rwanda Crisis.

In your first year, your core modules will explore people, politics and revolution – finding out how people struggled for power in past societies – and the culture and concepts those societies developed. We will teach you the skills you need to study and research history through an individual project of your choice. This joint degree enables you to address contemporary issues and trace them back to their historical roots.

You will be taught in small interactive seminar groups, encouraging discussion and debate with teaching staff and fellow students. We place a great deal of importance on employability skills in both sides of your degree, and our modules History Education, Discovering Archives and Collections, and Going Public all offer students short work placements and act as an introduction to possible career paths.

By studying international relations, you will acquire a strong grounding in the fundamental elements of the subject such as political ideas and international relations theory. Your teaching staff have direct professional experience and act as policy advisers to the government as well as international bodies such as the EU and UN. You will have the opportunity to gain a broad overview of the subject through a wide range of specialist core and optional modules, which cover topical issues such as European political integration, international terrorism, and politics in the Middle East.

You will have access to a number of unique resources. The University has three museums and several special collections for you to explore. In International Relations, we run model United Nations and Middle East simulations, get a feel of the political process and apply your knowledge and skills to a scenario that mimics real life.

You may study abroad for a term in your second year at a wide range of universities from Hong Kong to Melbourne, and broaden your knowledge and experiences. The University also offers all students the chance learn a modern language alongside their core subjects.