The Doctoral Program in history, with a core focus on world history, trains research historians who plan to teach at the college and university levels. Emphasizing global approaches to historical study, the program encourages students to think beyond national boundaries, comparatively, and in terms of themes that span geographically dispersed areas of the world-trade, migration, disease, religion, state formation, colonialism, and post-colonialism. Studies also include long-term historical processes, major global transformations, and interactions between states and colonial societies. Candidates for the Ph.D. in history may examine African, Asian, European, Latin American, or U.S. history in a world historical context. The program emphasizes mentoring of students in their courses, supervised teaching, and in the doctoral dissertation.
Its innovative curriculum and the faculty's state-of-the-art research in Digital Humanities further distinguish Northeastern nationally. With rigorous training in historiography and methodology, Northeastern PhDs have consistently won prestigious awards and hold tenure-track positions at research institutions and liberal arts colleges nationally.
Emphasizing global approaches to historical study, the PhD program encourages students to think beyond national boundaries, comparatively, and in terms of themes that span geographically dispersed areas of the world-trade, migration, disease, religion, state formation, colonialism, and post-colonialism. Studies also include long-term historical processes, major global transformations, and interactions between states and colonial societies.
Graduates of Northeastern's PhD program have gone on to work in a range of academic programs and fields around the country and the world. Graduates who have earned a PhD are currently teaching and conducting research at various institutions, including Oberlin College, Butler University, Delaware State University, the National University of Singapore, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and the American University in Cairo, to name a few. The diversity of these positions, as well as their prestige, speaks to the quality of graduate education at Northeastern University.