History Summer School - Detailed Outline (Online)

This page provides a detailed outline of the online History Summer School, showing the themes and topics explored in each session across the five-day course. The programme below explains what students study on each day, from the opening discussions about the purpose of history to later sessions on postcolonial history, gender history, intellectual history, and the study of war and diplomacy.

The course is taught through seminars, discussions, and collaborative historical investigations, giving students a taste of how history is studied at university level.

For further information about the academic level, teaching style, and who the course is best suited to, see the History Summer School FAQ.

Prefer to view and download the PDF version of this outline? You can do so here.

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Day One – The Purpose and Practice of History
Day Two – Postcolonial Perspectives
Day Three – Gender and History
Day Four – Intellectual History
Day Five – War, Diplomacy and High Politics

Across the week, students explore how historians interpret the past and why different historians often reach very different conclusions about the same events. Beginning with fundamental questions about the purpose of history and the nature of historical truth, the course introduces a range of historiographical approaches and examines how they shape the questions historians ask and the sources they prioritise. Students encounter debates around narrative history, structural analysis, postcolonial and gender perspectives, and intellectual history, while also taking part in simulations that allow them to experience historical interpretation in practice. By the end of the course, participants have developed a clearer understanding of how historical arguments are constructed and how competing interpretations of the past emerge.

Please note that for some groups, sessions may run in a different order.

10.00 – 11.00 The Purpose of History: What Are We Trying to Achieve?

What is the purpose of history? Is it simply to record the past, or does it serve a deeper function in shaping our identities, societies, and political landscapes? This opening session introduces students to some of the central debates in historiography, from the classical idea that history teaches moral lessons to modern critiques suggesting that historical writing is always shaped by the assumptions and priorities of the historian.

Students explore the perspectives of influential thinkers such as Leopold von Ranke, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and R. G. Collingwood, considering whether history should aspire to be an objective science or whether it is inevitably a form of interpretation and storytelling. The discussion also raises broader questions about how historians decide what is important enough to be recorded and who ultimately shapes historical narratives.

A further theme of the session is the tension between national and global history. Should history primarily reinforce national identity, or should it aim to situate the past within wider international and transnational contexts? Through discussion and reflection, students consider how history is used – and sometimes misused – in political rhetoric, education, and collective memory.

Key questions explored in this session include the nature of historical truth, the role of interpretation in historical writing, and the relationship between history, identity, and political culture.

11.00 – 12.30 Narrative and Biographical History: Telling Stories or Explaining Events?

Historians have taken very different approaches to writing about the past. Some historians, including writers such as Simon Schama and Yuval Noah Harari, emphasise narrative and storytelling, while others focus more strongly on analytical frameworks, economic structures, or statistical evidence. This session explores whether narrative history or analytical history brings us closer to understanding the past.

Students examine the strengths and limitations of biographical history, which focuses on the lives and choices of influential individuals, and compare this with macro-historical approaches that prioritise broader social and economic forces. Using examples such as Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, the discussion considers whether historical explanation should emphasise individual agency or structural conditions.

The session also introduces the idea of counterfactual history. By exploring “what if?” scenarios, historians attempt to clarify questions of causation and contingency. Students consider whether counterfactual thinking can illuminate the mechanisms of historical change or whether it risks distracting from rigorous historical analysis.

Key questions include the relationship between storytelling and explanation in historical writing, the role of individual agency in history, and whether counterfactual reasoning can meaningfully contribute to historical understanding.

12.30 – 1.30 Lunch

1.30 – 2.15 Approaches to History: Whigs, Marxists, and the Annales School

Historians do not simply describe the past; they interpret it through particular intellectual frameworks. This session examines how different schools of historical thought have shaped the way the past is studied and written.

Students explore the Whig interpretation of history, which presents the past as a gradual progression towards greater political freedom and intellectual development. They contrast this with Marxist historical analysis, which emphasises economic structures and class struggle as the driving forces of historical change. The discussion also introduces the Annales School, whose historians argued that long-term social, cultural, and environmental patterns often matter more than individual political events.

By comparing these approaches, students begin to see how the questions historians ask – and the sources they prioritise – are often shaped by their broader intellectual assumptions. The session therefore highlights how different interpretative frameworks can illuminate certain aspects of the past while obscuring others.

Key questions include how historians construct explanations of historical change, how intellectual frameworks influence historical interpretation, and how competing approaches can produce different accounts of the same events.

2.15 – 3.30 The ‘Corinthian Revolution’: A Hands-On Historical Investigation

The afternoon concludes with an extended historical simulation. Students are presented with a fictional but richly detailed revolution, supported by a collection of primary source materials including diaries, government records, political speeches, and newspaper articles.

Working in teams, students analyse the available sources from different historiographical perspectives. One group might approach the material from an economic or social viewpoint, another from a political or military perspective. Each group attempts to reconstruct what happened and explain why events unfolded as they did.

As the exercise develops, students discover that the same body of evidence can generate very different historical interpretations. Some groups may see the revolution primarily as the result of social and economic tensions, while others may emphasise the influence of political leadership or military developments.

By the end of the session, students gain first-hand experience of one of the central insights of modern historiography: history is not simply the recovery of facts. It is a process of interpretation that involves weighing evidence, constructing arguments, and recognising that multiple explanations may coexist.

Key questions explored include how historians prioritise evidence, how interpretative frameworks shape historical conclusions, and why disagreement between historians is an inevitable and productive feature of historical scholarship.

10.00 – 11.00 The Corinthian Revolution Debrief: Lessons from a Fictional History

Following the previous day’s historical simulation, students reflect on the competing interpretations that emerged from their investigations into the fictional Corinthian Revolution. Each group will have approached the same body of evidence from a different historiographical perspective, producing distinct and sometimes conflicting explanations of events.

This session explores what those differences reveal about the nature of historical interpretation. Did some approaches produce a more convincing account of the revolution than others? Were certain sources treated as more reliable, or did students discover that every source carried its own forms of bias and limitation?

Through discussion, students consider how historical narratives are constructed and why certain interpretations gain authority over time while others fade into the background. The exercise therefore serves as a bridge between the previous day’s methodological discussions and the next major theme of the course: how historians have begun to challenge long-established narratives of global history.

Key questions explored include how historians evaluate conflicting sources, why different methodologies produce different conclusions, and how historical interpretations come to dominate academic and public debate.

11.00 – 12.00 Postcolonialism and Eurocentric Perspectives: Who Controls the Historical Narrative?

For much of modern academic history, global events were interpreted primarily through a European lens. Colonisation was often presented as a story of exploration, development, and progress, with relatively little attention paid to the experiences or perspectives of colonised societies.

This session introduces students to postcolonial approaches to history, which seek to challenge these inherited narratives. Drawing on the work of thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and Achille Mbembe, students explore how colonised peoples have analysed and resisted the intellectual frameworks imposed by colonial powers.

Students examine how imperial expansion was justified in political discourse and historical writing, and how these justifications have continued to shape global politics and cultural memory. The discussion also considers contemporary debates surrounding historical reparations, public apologies for colonial violence, and the question of whether national histories should be rewritten to include previously marginalised voices.

Key questions explored include who has the power to shape historical narratives, how colonial perspectives influenced traditional historical writing, and how postcolonial historians seek to reinterpret global history.

12.00 – 1.00 Lunch

1.00 – 2.30 The Haitian Revolution and Shifting Historical Narratives

The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was one of the most transformative events of the modern era: a successful slave uprising that led to the creation of the first independent Black republic in the Americas. Yet for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the revolution received surprisingly little attention in many Western historical accounts.

This session investigates why such a significant event was marginalised for so long. Students read extracts from C. L. R. James’s influential work The Black Jacobins, which argues that Haiti’s revolution should be understood as a pivotal event in the history of modern freedom and democracy.

Through discussion, students consider how racial prejudice, political anxiety about slave uprisings, and the priorities of European and American historians contributed to the revolution’s relative absence from mainstream narratives. The session demonstrates how revisiting overlooked events can fundamentally reshape our understanding of world history.

Key questions explored include why some historical events become central to historical memory while others are marginalised, how historians reassess neglected episodes of the past, and how political and cultural assumptions influence the construction of historical importance.

2.30 – 3.30 Oral Histories and Indigenous Perspectives

Not all historical traditions rely on written documents. Many societies have preserved their past through oral storytelling, collective memory, and cultural transmission across generations.

This session explores how Indigenous communities in regions such as Canada and Australia maintain and interpret their histories through oral traditions. Students examine how oral history differs from written historical records, considering both its strengths and its challenges within academic historical practice.

The discussion also addresses the ways in which colonial governments attempted to suppress or erase Indigenous historical traditions, and how contemporary Indigenous communities and scholars are working to reclaim, preserve, and reinterpret these histories.

By examining oral history as a legitimate form of historical knowledge, students are encouraged to broaden their understanding of what counts as historical evidence and how different cultures approach the preservation of the past.

Key questions explored include how oral traditions function as historical sources, how historians evaluate different types of evidence, and how Indigenous perspectives are reshaping historical scholarship today.

10.00 – 12.00 Gender in Medieval and Early Modern History: Power and Constraint

What did it mean to be male or female in the past? How did gender roles shape social expectations, legal systems, and structures of power? This extended session examines the construction of gender in medieval and early modern Europe, drawing on primary sources, historical case studies, and feminist historiography.

Students explore texts such as Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies, which defends women’s intellectual and moral capacities, and Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, which outlines ideals of behaviour for men and women within Renaissance court culture. Through these works, students examine how ideas about chivalry, honour, virtue, and authority shaped expectations of gendered behaviour.

The session culminates in an interactive “time-travel debate”, in which students adopt historical viewpoints drawn from the texts they have studied. By inhabiting these perspectives, students explore how gender expectations were constructed, defended, and contested in different historical contexts, while also identifying both continuities and shifts between medieval and early modern ideals.

Key questions explored include how gender roles were defined and enforced in past societies, how historical texts reveal competing visions of masculinity and femininity, and how historians reconstruct the lived experience of gender in earlier periods.

12.00 – 1.00 Comparative Perspectives on Gender: How Have Ideas Changed?

This session builds on the earlier discussion by examining how ideas about masculinity and femininity have evolved over time. Students analyse a range of primary sources, including conduct manuals and courtly literature, which articulated expectations for male and female behaviour in different historical contexts.

Alongside these primary texts, students engage with the work of modern historians such as Joan W. Scott and Judith Bennett, whose scholarship has helped reshape the study of gender in historical research. Their work raises broader questions about how historians interpret gender systems and how social norms surrounding gender develop and change across different periods.

By comparing sources from different centuries, students consider how historical societies constructed gender identities and how these constructions both reflected and reinforced wider social hierarchies.

Key questions explored include how gender norms evolve over time, how historians identify continuity and change in social expectations, and how modern gender historiography reshapes our understanding of earlier societies.

1.00 – 2.00 Lunch

2.00 – 3.00 Travel Narratives Across Time: Western Views of “Oriental” Women

The afternoon turns to the intersection of gender, empire, and cultural representation. This session examines how women in the Middle East and other parts of the non-Western world were portrayed in Western travel writing across different historical periods.

Students compare early modern travel accounts such as those of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu with later nineteenth-century writings by figures such as Gertrude Bell. These sources provide insight into how Western observers interpreted and represented the lives of women in societies they perceived as culturally unfamiliar.

Drawing on the work of scholars such as Edward Said and Lila Abu-Lughod, students analyse how travel narratives contributed to broader cultural frameworks that portrayed non-Western societies as exotic, mysterious, or fundamentally different from Europe. The session therefore explores how gendered representations became entangled with imperial power and cultural misunderstanding.

Key questions explored include how Western writers represented women in other societies, how travel writing contributed to orientalist perspectives, and how historians analyse cultural bias in historical sources.

3.00 – 3.30 The Evolution of Gender Theory and Intersectionality

The final session of the day brings historical perspectives into conversation with modern theoretical debates about gender. Students examine how contemporary thinkers have challenged earlier assumptions about gender identity and social roles.

Using extracts from Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, alongside earlier historical sources discussed during the day, students consider how ideas about gender have shifted over time. The seminar also introduces the concept of intersectionality, which examines how gender interacts with other dimensions of identity such as race, class, and social status.

Engaging with the work of scholars including bell hooks and Kimberlé Crenshaw, students explore how intersectional approaches have expanded historical analysis by highlighting the complexity of lived experience and social power structures.

Key questions explored include how modern gender theory reshapes the interpretation of historical evidence, how intersectionality expands the study of gender in history, and how historians balance theoretical frameworks with historical context.

10.00 – 11.30 Hobbes, Machiavelli, and the Philosophy of Power

How do intellectual ideas shape political institutions and social structures? In what ways do philosophical debates reflect the historical contexts in which they emerge? This session introduces students to the field of intellectual history and examines how ideas about power and authority have developed across different historical periods.

The core of the session focuses on two influential early modern thinkers: Thomas Hobbes and Niccolò Machiavelli. Through close reading of extracts from Hobbes’s Leviathan and Machiavelli’s The Prince, students examine contrasting visions of political authority, social order, and human nature.

Students consider Hobbes’s argument that stable government emerges from a social contract designed to escape the chaos of a “state of nature”, and contrast this with Machiavelli’s more pragmatic analysis of political leadership and power. Supported by secondary scholarship, the discussion explores how both thinkers addressed fundamental questions about governance, legitimacy, and political stability.

Key questions explored include how political thinkers explain the origins of authority, how historical circumstances influence political philosophy, and how different traditions of political thought shape debates about power and governance.

11.30 – 1.00 Ruling Your Principality: A Leadership Simulation

This session places students directly into the world of early modern political thought through an interactive simulation. Participants take on the roles of rulers, advisors, and rival factions within a fictional sixteenth-century principality.

Drawing on ideas encountered in the previous session, students must make strategic decisions about how to govern their state. Should they seek alliances with neighbouring powers, wage war against rivals, or prioritise internal stability? Should a ruler rely on strict authority, or attempt to cultivate popular support?

As the exercise unfolds, students experience the practical dilemmas of political leadership and explore how the theories of Machiavelli and Hobbes might translate into real political decision-making. The simulation therefore highlights the relationship between abstract political ideas and the unpredictable realities of historical governance.

Key questions explored include how political theory informs practical decision-making, how leaders balance stability and authority, and how different political strategies shape the fate of states.

1.00 – 2.00 Lunch

2.00 – 3.30 Foucault and Bourdieu: Power, Knowledge, and Social Structures

The final session of the day moves from early modern political thought to modern theories of power and society. Rather than focusing solely on governments and rulers, modern social theorists have explored how power operates through institutions, cultural norms, and everyday social practices.

Students are introduced to Michel Foucault’s analysis of discipline and surveillance, including his famous metaphor of the panopticon. Foucault argued that modern societies often regulate behaviour not through visible coercion but through systems that encourage individuals to monitor and control themselves.

The session also examines the work of Pierre Bourdieu, whose concept of cultural capital explores how education, taste, and social habits reproduce inequalities across generations. Students analyse how cultural expectations and institutional structures can reinforce social hierarchies even in societies that formally promote equality.

By bringing together these perspectives, the session expands the concept of power beyond traditional political institutions, encouraging students to consider how social structures shape both individual behaviour and broader patterns of inequality.

Key questions explored include how modern theorists conceptualise power in society, how institutions and cultural norms reinforce social hierarchies, and how intellectual frameworks help historians analyse structures of power beyond formal politics.

10.00 – 11.00 War as a Historical Phenomenon: Why Do Wars Happen?

In an important sense, the history of humanity is also a history of war and conflict. Although modern historians no longer focus exclusively on the decisions of political leaders and “great men”, there is little doubt that wars have repeatedly reshaped societies, political systems, and international borders. This session examines how historians analyse war as a historical phenomenon and asks whether it is possible to identify recurring causes of conflict across different periods.

Students work in groups to analyse case studies of different wars drawn from across world history, including examples such as the Punic Wars, the Norman Conquest, the Thirty Years’ War, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Vietnam War. Each group investigates the motives behind their conflict, the factors that shaped its outcome, and the immediate consequences it produced.

By comparing these case studies, students begin to explore both continuity and change in the history of warfare. They consider how developments such as the rise of nation-states, the expansion of military bureaucracies, changing military technologies, and evolving ideological motivations have shaped the character of war over time. At the same time, they examine persistent elements such as competition for power, territorial ambition, and the importance of discipline and morale in determining military success.

Key questions explored include whether wars share common causes across different historical periods, how historians explain the relationship between warfare and the development of states, and how changing military structures influence the wider organisation of society.

11.00 – 1.00 War, Society, and Culture: Experiencing Conflict

Having examined war from a broad historical perspective, this session shifts focus from the causes of conflict to the ways in which wars are experienced by ordinary people. Students explore how historians can move beyond traditional “high politics” narratives to examine the social and cultural impact of warfare.

Using primary sources such as wartime diaries and personal accounts from the Second World War, students analyse how individuals experienced the pressures of total war, including the emotional strain, economic hardship, and social transformations brought about by prolonged conflict. These sources provide insight into everyday life during wartime and illustrate how conflict reshapes expectations of government, social roles, and national identity.

The discussion then turns to the Cold War, exploring how ideological conflict between rival political systems was expressed through culture as well as military power. Students examine examples of Cold War cultural production and propaganda to consider how political ideas were communicated to ordinary citizens and how cultural competition became part of a broader geopolitical struggle.

Key questions explored include how historians reconstruct everyday experiences of war, how cultural expression can become a tool of political conflict, and how ideological rivalry shaped global society during the Cold War.

1.00 – 2.00 Lunch

2.00 – 3.30 Drawing Lines on Maps: Diplomacy and High Politics in History

The course concludes with an extended historical simulation focused on diplomacy and international negotiation. Students examine how the political landscape of the twentieth century was shaped by the decisions of diplomats and political leaders at key moments of post-war settlement.

Working with historical maps, economic information, and intelligence briefings, students are tasked with negotiating their own version of a post–Second World War settlement. Acting as representatives of major powers such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States, they must redraw borders, negotiate alliances, determine military arrangements, and decide how to address questions of colonial withdrawal and political influence.

As negotiations unfold, students quickly discover the challenges faced by historical diplomats. Every decision carries consequences: strengthening one state may weaken another, territorial compromises may store up future tensions, and ideological disagreements may derail attempts at cooperation.

The simulation therefore illustrates how diplomatic decisions, political interests, and competing visions of international order shape the global landscape. It also reinforces one of the central lessons of the course: historical outcomes often emerge from complex negotiations between competing interests rather than from simple or inevitable processes.

Key questions explored include how diplomatic negotiations shape international order, how political leaders balance national interest with long-term stability, and how historians interpret the decisions that produce lasting geopolitical consequences.

This outline provides a detailed view of the themes and topics explored during the in-person History Summer School. The programme is designed to introduce students to the kinds of questions historians ask and the methods they use to interpret the past, while also giving participants the opportunity to test those ideas through discussion and historical simulations.

If you would like to learn more about how the course works in practice – including the academic level, teaching style, and who the course is best suited to – please see the History Summer School FAQ.

You can also return to the main online History Summer School page for full details about the course and how to apply.