Employability Facts and Figures

With a history degree you will gain a varied insight into how human nature operates, developing both empathy and understanding. It is this understanding which renders history graduates mature and intellectual individuals with the capacity to analyse situations in the current day with an adept and informed eye. As a consequence history graduates are skilled problem solvers - they can detect patterns in thinking, behaviour and society qualities that any employer would look for.

Careers facts

A degree in History offers numerous transferable skills such as: logical argumentation; sifting, processing and analysing vast amounts of information - both quantitative and qualitative; time-management; project-management; written and oral communication. These are all skills that any employer would look for in a candidate. 

A History degree sets you up to apply for almost any other occupation and many of our undergraduates find themselves in a career unrelated to their subject. However, the skills that you learn can be applied to marketing, business, journalism, in fact, the degree opens up a number of different channels that may not have occurred to you before.

History at Southampton

At Southampton we encourage our students to think about the future whilst studying, throughout the History degree there are many ways for a student to enhance their employability skills. In the second year you are able to maximise you presentational, team-work and organisational skills with a group project, providing a unique opportunity to source, analyse and present your findings to the general public.

Although there are only a few careers available in the Historical field outside academia, students who are passionate about their subject will be able to use their experience at Southampton to gain a position; from out last cohort, one is now working for the English Heritage as a Historic Properties Steward, whilst another works as a Curatorial Intern for the Historical Royal Palaces.

There are a number of roles available to you that you are probably unaware of. Our graduates have gone into professional and technical occupations with one graduate taking an internship in the Cabinet Office.