St Anne’s is the home of choice for the brightest and most ambitious students, including those from underrepresented groups.
St Anne’s is one of Oxford’s largest colleges, with over 800 students. Our Fellows’ world leading research ranges across the arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics, and physical, life and medical sciences.
Our diverse, inclusive community extends around the globe through our alumnae, who build on their experiences here to change the world for the better.
Situated within 5 acres of tranquil leafy grounds, St Anne’s enjoys a unique atmosphere in which to hold any conference, dinner or special event.
A degree course in History and Modern Languages with us is an exciting way to explore language, culture and history from across the globe, and to develop skills that will open a wide range of career opportunities.
The course is an excellent way to combine the study of a single European language with a broader humanities education. In studying History and Modern Languages, you can call on the forensic literary skills of a linguist in interrogating historical documents. You can also draw on your understanding of political, social and economic developments to enrich your engagement with literature, film and other culture.
Our course is celebrated for its wide scope and the enormous amount of choice offered. In History you can study options on any part of British and European history from the declining years of the Roman Empire to the present day. You can also take options on North American, Latin American, Asian and African history.
In modern languages, as well as developing a high level of fluency and confidence in your language, you can study its thought and literature from medieval times right up to the present day, as well as twentieth- and twenty-first-century cinema.
Your studies can take you wherever your language is spoken, including post-colonial nations from Algeria to Argentina, perhaps inspiring you to explore some of them in person during the course’s year abroad.
Throughout the course you are encouraged to follow your interests, drawing connections between the history and modern languages sides of the course wherever and whenever is most fascinating to you. That includes the final-year dissertation project, which brings history and modern languages together in a combined study of a topic of your choice.
Both the History and the Modern Languages departments at St Anne’s are among the largest and liveliest in the College. And the arts faculties at Oxford are some of the largest (if not the largest) in the world. College tutors (Fellows and Lecturers) cover a wide range of periods and specialist areas in History, as well as French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian (both literature and language). We also have native language assistants for French. This means that, particularly at the beginning of the course, students can expect to spend a reasonable proportion of their time working in College; but of course, having found your feet, we want you to make use of the full resources of the wider University.
In History Professor Howard Hotson and Peter Ghosh have strong European research interests (in early modern Europe and modern Germany respectively); and our modern Americanist confronts the linguistic plethora which is 20th century America. On the Modern Language side, Professor Patrick McGuinness works on 19th- and 20th-century French literature; Dr Geraldine Hazbun specializes in the literature and historiography of medieval and Golden Age Spain; Dr Simon Park has exposed the worldly life of 16th century Portuguese poets; Dr Tom Kuhn works on German political literature in the 20th century, and in particular on Bertolt Brecht.
Professor of Modern History, Tutorial Fellow in History
Stipendiary Lecturer in Ancient History and Tutorial Fellow at Brasenose College
Associate Professor of Environmental History
Departmental Lecturer in Twentieth-Century U.S. History
Senior Research Fellow
Fellow and Tutor in Modern History, Professor of Early Modern Intellectual History
St Anne’s is a down-to-earth, friendly and independent-minded college that takes people for what they are. It is modern in its outlook and architecture and open to the world, informal and yet academically demanding.