Doctor of Philosophy in History - Atlantic World History

Vanderbilt ranks among the nation's top twenty research universities and boasts a diverse and dynamic History Department. One of the newest and most exciting areas of faculty research and graduate training at Vanderbilt is Atlantic World History. Graduate students who choose to complete a major or minor field in Atlantic World history at Vanderbilt will be introduced to a wide range of literature addressing the interactions among European, Native American, and African peoples. Working closely with our Atlantic World historians, students develop a dissertation topic and prospectus during their fifth and sixth semesters.

From their first semester, we encourage doctoral students in our field to become actively engaged in the profession through field research, networking, collaborative projects, grant writing and publishing. We also encourage training in digital humanities and our students have worked on projects such as the Slave Societies Digital Archive, the Manuel Zapata Olivella Collection and Enslaved: Peoples of the Historic Slave Trade.

Our students have presented their research at numerous national and international conferences including the American Historical Association, the Conference on Latin American History, the Brazilian Studies Association, the Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History, the African History Association, and the Association of Caribbean History, among others. Over the last decade our students have won many prestigious research awards, including the Fulbright, Social Science Research Council, American Council for Learned Societies, and Rotary fellowships. Our students have conducted research in areas as diverse as Angola, Barbados, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Germany, Ghana, Jamaica, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

Qualified applicants with bachelor's or comparable non-U.S. degrees are eligible for admission to the Graduate School. Applications from international students with three- year bachelor's degrees will also be considered.
Applicants must upload an unofficial copy of transcripts from prior undergraduate and graduate work as part of their online application for admission. Official transcripts are required only after an offer of admission is made and accepted.
The minimum acceptable score on the TOEFL PBT (paper- based test) is 570, and for the TOEFL iBT (internet- based test), 88. Many programs, however, require a considerably higher level of proficiency.
IELTS, the minimum acceptable score will vary by program. In many cases, a score of at least 7.0 is desirable.