School of History, Classics & Archaeology

About the School

The School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh is one of the great world centres for the study of the human past.

Exterior of building

The School comprises the three subject areas of History, Classics and Archaeology, together with the Centre for the Study of Modern and Contemporary History, the Edinburgh Centre for Global History  and the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Information about the history of our subject areas, and about our specialist research centres, may be found under 'Related links' below, together with screencast about the history of the University as a whole.

Excellence

The School's research quality was shown by the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 where our subjects were in the top five in the UK for breadth and quality of research (THE Research Power rank). You can find out more about the School's REF results, and some of the research projects included in the School's submission, and an overview of the University REF results at the links below.

Our community

There are over 150 staff - both academic and administrative (Professional Services) - and approximately 600 graduate students. Our current undergraduate population is nearly 1500 students, of whom around a quarter are international students.

Our staff

Our building

During the summer of 2010 the entire School co-located to an seven-storey 'A' listed building (pictured above), designed by the distinguished Scottish architect Sir Robert Rowand Anderson in the nineteenth century. The refurbishment, at a cost of £16m, provided state-of-the-art facilities for staff, postgraduate and undergraduate students.