Doctor of Philosophy in History - Africa

Our Ph.D. program has much to offer. In addition to the attention of a distinguished and award-winning History faculty, our students benefit from Georgetown's many regional studies programs and intellectual centers, where interdisciplinary activity is prized. Opportunities for language training abound. No city has greater resources for historians than Washington, D.C.: the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the National Library of Medicine, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and many other institutions hold an unparalleled wealth of research material.

Students at Georgetown have long incorporated Africa-related topics into their research and courses of study within the Atlantic, U.S. Diplomatic, and Transregional fields. The Africa field was established in 2015 to take advantage of a convergence of opportunities: the position of African History as a field of growth within the discipline of History in higher education and Georgetown's distinctive advantages as a place to study African History.

The department's Africanist faculty enjoy complementary and overlapping chronological, regional, and thematic specializations. Meredith McKittrick researches 19th- and 20th-century southern Africa, with a focus on Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, and Angola. She is interested in histories of the environment, gender, Christianity, settler colonialism, decolonization, and comparative race relations. Kathryn de Luna studies precolonial central Africa, extending into the histories of eastern and southern Africa and across millennia through her specialization in historical linguistics. She is interested in historical approaches to topics like subsistence, mobility, emotions, senses, environments, and technology as well as unconventional historical methodologies.

All applicants to the PhD program should have strong analytical, language, and writing skills. An undergraduate GPA above 3.3 is expected, and above 3.5 is encouraged.
Applications for PhD admission include:
a 500-word, double spaced statement of purpose,
a substantive sample of work (research papers preferred, maximum of 50 pages, if you are excerpting a larger work, please provide a cover page explaining the selection and larger context),
unofficial transcripts from any and all college and universities attended (see note below on unofficial transcripts),
GRE General Test scores (optional),
TOEFL/IELTS where applicable (see note below on language proficiency),
and three letters of recommendation.
Resume/CV
TOEFL/IELTS (if applicable)
TOEFL = 80 minimum
IELTS = 7.0 minimum