About Us

U-M History is global, multidimensional, and interdisciplinary. Regularly ranked among the top history departments in the country, we combine state-of-the-art research with innovative teaching and a commitment to embrace all the diversity of the past. With nearly half our faculty holding joint appointments, reaching beyond traditional boundaries is central to our intellectual and pedagogical culture.

Our graduate program draws talented students from around the world. We aim to provide our graduate students with outstanding training not only in their research fields, but also as future teachers and leaders in an array of professions within and beyond institutions of higher learning. Our undergraduate program encourages students to follow their curiosity and express their creativity. Throughout our curriculum, we challenge our students to inquire, analyze, synthesize, and interpret as they attempt to situate their lives and times in relationship to the past.

U-M's first history courses were taught in the 1840s, and the department traces its roots to the 1880s, following the national establishment of the discipline. From Andrew Dickson White in 1857 (first president of the American Historical Association) to Sylvia L. Thrupp in 1961 (founder of the groundbreaking journal Comparative Studies in Society and History) to the current roster of more than 80 faculty (one of the largest departments in the world), U-M History has helped shape the field for more than a century. With more than 10,000 alums around the globe, our influence reaches far beyond the Ann Arbor campus. Learn more about the history of U-M History in University of Michigan: An Encyclopedic Survey (Bicentennial Version).

Come explore our website and see how U-M History engages complexity, diversity, and change in the present and the past.