The UCL Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences is one of the 11 constituent faculties of

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

(UCL). The current Executive

Dean Dean may refer to: People * Dean (given name) * Dean (surname), a surname of Anglo-Saxon English origin * Dean (South Korean singer), a stage name for singer Kwon Hyuk * Dean Delannoit, a Belgian singer most known by the mononym Dean Titles * ...

of the Faculty is Professor Jennifer Hudson, having been appointed from September 2022.

History

19th century

The Chair of Political Economy at UCL was created in 1827 in memory of

David Ricardo David Ricardo (18 April 1772 – 11 September 1823) was a British political economist. He was one of the most influential of the classical economists along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith and James Mill. Ricardo was also a politician, and a ...

, establishing the first Department of Economics in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. The first holder of the chair was

John Ramsay McCulloch John Ramsay McCulloch (1 March 1789 – 11 November 1864) was a Scottish economist, author and editor, widely regarded as the leader of the Ricardian school of economists after the death of David Ricardo in 1823. He was appointed the first pr ...

. In 1833 Alexander Maconochie was appointed as Professor of Geography at UCL, the first such appointment in the British Isles. In 1853

Gottfried Kinkel Johann Gottfried Kinkel (11 August 1815 – 13 November 1882) was a German poet also noted for his revolutionary activities and his escape from a Prussian prison in Spandau with the help of his friend Carl Schurz. Early life He was born at Ober ...

gave a series of lectures on medieval art at UCL.

William Stanley Jevons William Stanley Jevons (; 1 September 183513 August 1882) was an English economist and logician. Irving Fisher described Jevons's book ''A General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy'' (1862) as the start of the mathematical method in ec ...

held a professorship of Economics at UCL between 1876 and 1880.

20th century

In 1922

Tancred Borenius Carl Tancred Borenius (14 July 1885, Vyborg – 2 September 1948, Coombe Bisset) was a Finnish art historian working in England, who became the first professor of the history of art at University College London. He was a prolific author, and recog ...

became the first holder of the UCL Chair in History of Art, a post he held until his death in 1948. He was succeeded by

Rudolf Wittkower Rudolf Wittkower (22 June 1901 – 11 October 1971) was a British art historian specializing in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture, who spent much of his career in London, but was educated in Germany, and later moved to the Unite ...

from 1948 to 1956 and

Ernst Gombrich Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich (; ; 30 March 1909 – 3 November 2001) was an Austrian-born art historian who, after settling in England in 1936, became a naturalised British citizen in 1947 and spent most of his working life in the United Kin ...

from 1956 to 1959.

Ronald Fisher Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was a British polymath who was active as a mathematician, statistician, biologist, geneticist, and academic. For his work in statistics, he has been described as "a genius who ...

was Professor of Eugenics at UCL between 1933 and 1939. Ian Christie was a reader of History from 1960 to 1966, Professor of History from 1966 to 1979, Chairman of the History Department from 1975 to 1979 and Astor Professor of British History from 1979 to 1984. Between 1962 and 1972

Peter Ucko Peter John Ucko FRAI FSA (27 July 1938 – 14 June 2007) was an influential English archaeologist. He served as Director of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London (UCL), and was a Fellow of both the Royal Anthropological ...

was lecturer in anthropology at UCL. Sir Robert Rees Davies was a lecturer in the Department of History between 1963 and 1976. UCL merged with the Institute of Archaeology in 1986. The Constitution Unit was established in April 1995. The

School of Slavonic and East European Studies The UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES ) is a school of University College London (UCL) specializing in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Russia and Eurasia. It teaches a range of subjects, including the history ...

merged with UCL in 1999.

21st century

In May 2003, a team from the Department of Anthropology published a major piece of research on the possible link between the amount of food that a mother has to eat and the gender of her children. In May 2006 a report co-authored by James Banks of the Department of Economics was published which concluded that rates of diseases such as diabetes, lung cancer and high-blood pressure were up to twice as high among Americans aged between 55 and 64 as among English people of the same age group. Between 1997 and 2007

Lindsey Hughes Lindsey Hughes (4 May 1949 – 26 April 2007) was a British historian who studied seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Russia, especially the reign of Peter the Great. She wrote biographies of Peter and his predecessor Sophia Alekseyevna, as we ...

was a Professor of Russian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies. In May 2009 a major report on the health risks posed by

global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

co-authored by Mark Maslin, the Director of the Environment Institute, was published. In January 2010

Simon Corcoran Simon Corcoran ( ) is a British ancient historian and lecturer in ancient history within the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University. Corcoran was a senior research fellow at University College, London from 1999 to 201 ...

and

Benet Salway Richard William Benet Salway is a senior lecturer in ancient history at University College London. His areas of speciality include Greek and Roman epigraphy and onomastics, Roman law, Roman Imperial history and travel and geography in the Graeco ...

of the History Department discovered fragments of the Gregorian Codex, an important

Roman law Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (c. 449 BC), to the '' Corpus Juris Civilis'' (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor Ju ...

code that previously had been thought lost forever.

Departments

The Faculty currently comprises the following nine Departments and Institutes: *UCL Anthropology *

UCL Department of Economics The UCL Department of Economics is one of nine Departments and Institutes within the Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences at University College London. It is the oldest department of economics in England and is research-intensive, currentl ...

*UCL Department of Geography *UCL History Department *UCL History of Art Department *UCL Institute of the Americas *

UCL Institute of Archaeology UCL's Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of the Social & Historical Sciences Faculty of University College London (UCL) which it joined in 1986 having previously been a school of the University of London. It is currently one o ...

*UCL Department of Political Science & School of Public Policy *UCL Institute of Advanced Studies

Research

The Faculty is closely involved with the following research centres and institutes: *Centre for Applied Archaeology *Centre for Audio-Visual Study and Practice in Archaeology *Centre for Digital Anthropology *Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies *

Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) is an economic research institute based in London, United Kingdom, which specialises in UK taxation and public policy. It produces both academic and policy-related findings. The institute's aim is to "ad ...

*Centre for Museums, Heritage and Material Culture Studies *Centre for Research on the Dynamics of Civilisation (CREDOC) *Centre for Terrestrial Carbon Dynamics *Centre for the Evaluation of Development Policies *Centre for Transnational History *China Centre for Health & Humanity *Climate and Water Research Unit *Coastal and Estuarine Research Centre * Constitution Unit *Environment Institute *Environmental Change Research Centre *Institute for Subjectivity and the Cultural Imagination *International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology *Laboratory for the Ethnography of the UK *Migration Research Unit *The Equiano Centre * Urban Lab

Rankings

In the 2020 ''

Times Higher Education World University Rankings The ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'' (often referred to as the THE Rankings) is an annual publication of university rankings by the ''Times Higher Education'' (THE) magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarelli ...

'', UCL is ranked 11th in the world (and 4th in Europe) for Social Sciences, and sixth globally (third in Europe) in Arts and Humanities. In the 2020 ''

QS World University Rankings ''QS World University Rankings'' is an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). The QS system comprises three parts: the global overall ranking, the subject rankings (which name the world's top universities for the ...

by subject'', UCL is ranked eighth (fourth in Europe) for Geography, 17th (fifth in Europe) for Economics & Econometrics, 17th for History, and 44th for Politics and International Studies.

References

External links

UCL Faculty of Social and Historical SciencesUniversity College London
{{University College London, academics Departments of University College London