Guide to the listings

Guide to the listings

The Institute of Historical Research published print listings of theses awarded from 1901, as part of the series Historical research for University degrees in the United Kingdom. The first part of the listings, covering the years 1901–1970, is available on British History Online as a separate publication. This second set covers the years 1970–2014. The two sets overlap by one year.

The print publications used indexes to help readers navigate the contents. Where we had these available in electronic form we have exposed the index material next to the thesis it relates to as an aid to search. Readers should note, therefore, that terms such as See and See also are purely a feature of the original print volumes and do not represent a cross-reference within the digital version. Where they exist, the index terms allow for a very fine-grained search for terms which may not be in the title of the thesis, particularly proper names. This means that searching within free text may yield precise results.

Readers who wish to work on the data in aggregate can download it from our GitHub repository. The repository's README file makes some suggestions for how to search the files.

The information in the listings was collected over a number of decades and information collection and publishing practices naturally varied. Therefore some entries are more detailed than others.

A broad taxonomy is included under the term Categories. This allows the reader to search on the page for terms which will filter the type of historical research, period or further geographical terms. For example, searching on the page 'Modern Europe' for 'Asia and Middle East' will find theses that cover both areas. Intentionally, such a thesis is listed on the 'Asia' page as well.

With the caveat that the terms have not been consistently applied and should not be regarded as an exhaustive search, the taxonomy is:

Geography

• Africa
• Asia and Middle East
• Australasia and Pacific
• Britain and Ireland
• Europe
• Latin America
• West Indies
• North America
• World

History types

• Administrative history
• Agriculture
• Archaeology
• Art and Architecture
• Business history
• Byzantine history
• Cultural history
• Ecclesiastical and religious history
• Economic history
• Education
• Environmental history
• Ethnic and migration history
• Gender and Women
• Historical geography
• Historiography
• Imperial and colonial
• Intellectual history
• International history
• Legal history
• Local and regional history
• Local history
• Medicine
• Medieval
• Military and naval history
• Military/naval history
• Modern
• Oral history
• Philosophy of history
• Political history
• Population
• Pre-1000 BC
• Science and technology
• Social history
• Social sciences
• Transport
• Urban history

Periods

• Ancient
• 1000-1 BC
• AD 1-500
• 500-1000
• 11th Century
• 12th Century
• 13th Century
• 14th Century
• 15th Century
• 16th Century
• 16th-17th Century
• 17th Century
• 18th Century
• 18th-19th Century
• 19th Century
• 20th Century

In November 2020 BHO staff added links from individual theses to the British Library's EThOS listing of UK doctoral theses. This process was automated and not every title could be matched. Furthermore, the British History Online listing is broader in scope than EThOS, listing non-doctoral theses and theses awarded in the Republic of Ireland. However the majority of UK doctoral theses link to their entry on EThOS.