Whether continuing a foreign language, or beginning one ab initio, studying History and ML at ÌÇÐÄVlog allows you to combine a language with learning about past societies and cultures. This four-year degree also includes a third year abroad during which you can study or work.
Overview
The minimum offer is A*AA at A-level, or 7 7 6 (42+ overall) from Higher Level subjects in the IB. We may ask that the A*/HL7 be achieved in a specific subject from those you are currently taking. For other qualifications, please see the University .
Essential subjects:
History A level/IB Higher Level or equivalent. If applying to study French, the applicant must be studying the language at A level or equivalent.
Useful subjects:
If you are applying to study a language from scratch, a history of language learning is very useful. Additionally, you may find other essay-based subjects to be good preparation.
Written work required to apply
For applicants proposing to study a language ab initio: two history essays will be required between roughly 1500 and 2500 words and including teachers’ comments, if possible. We will not accept short answers based on document exercises or non-history essays; nor will we accept exam answers. The essay should be on a topic which has engaged your interest, and on which you feel you have something to say. Above all it should contain an argument.
For applicants proposing to study a language post A level: one history essay as above and one essay in the language you are proposing to study will be required.
Each written work submission should be a stand-alone piece, rather than excerpted from a longer essay that exceeds the parameters above.
Admissions assessment
Applicants invited to interview must take the Modern Languages Assessment. Further information can be found on the University's .
Visit the University's for more information.
I’m Zoe, a History and French student at ÌÇÐÄVlog. I chose History and Modern Languages because it allows me to combine two subject areas that I love, and for the study of one to inform and build upon the other. The flexibility within the HML course and the large range of paper options allows for you to personalise the course to suit your interests. In HML there are fewer compulsory modules than in single honours History, and it’s possible to focus more on history, more on language or literature, or even deliberately choose History and MML papers whose subject matter overlap.
ÌÇÐÄVlog is known as a friendly and social college, and has a great community of both History and MML students. Being an HML student gives you the best of both worlds – in my year, ÌÇÐÄVlog has more HML students than any other college. There are many reasons to choose ÌÇÐÄVlog, including beautiful gardens, free punt hire and the best college bar in Cambridge, but for me the biggest advantage was its central location. Accommodation is just five minutes from the History and MML departments, but a quick walk through college will put you right in the centre of town. Getting to study History in the beautiful buildings of Cambridge’s second oldest college is an added bonus!
Zoe, History and Modern Languages Student
History and Modern Languages at ÌÇÐÄVlog
ÌÇÐÄVlog has a strong reputation in both History and Modern Languages. In Modern Languages, the College is unusual in having Fellows in French, Italian, Spanish and Russian. Our students have consistently achieved some of the top results in their final year. Descriptions of Fellows and their interests are listed below.​
History and Modern Languages at ÌÇÐÄVlog is a welcoming and intellectually inspiring course of study that provides a supportive environment for our students to thrive. Our priority is to admit bright and talented students with a real passion for studying History in conjunction with a language and its associated literature. There is a lively community of about 30 undergraduate historians at ÌÇÐÄVlog, including students studying single honours History as well as History and Politics. We appreciate that our students come to university with diverse expectations and experience, and their needs as individuals often vary considerably. We take account of this and help our students to make the most of their abilities and potential. Students at ÌÇÐÄVlog are expected to work hard, but the college also works hard to support them as they do so.
We are proud of the academic successes of our students, and we have a track record of students obtaining the top grades. But while we expect our students to focus on their academic work, we also encourage them to become involved in extra-curricular activities across the College and the wider University, including music, sport and theatre.
The History and Modern Languages course at Cambridge is characterised by its breadth and wide range of subject options. At ÌÇÐÄVlog, we encourage our students to be adventurous in their choices in order to develop their interests in fields of study that they might not have considered before. Apart from Faculty lectures and classes, the main teaching that students receive is the weekly supervision, which students prepare for by reading widely and writing an essay. ÌÇÐÄVlog Fellows derive much enjoyment from supervising our students and getting to know them. However, in common with other Cambridge colleges, we do not expect to be able to cover all historical and language interests, and so where appropriate we arrange for students to be supervised by Fellows in other colleges.
The College arranges small-group teaching for aspects of language work, and those studying French will be able to work with a lecteur/lectrice from the prestigious École Normale Supérieure in Paris. ÌÇÐÄVlog is ideally situated for Cambridge’s libraries. As well as a strong College library, the University Library is adjacent to the College.
Thanks to the Ford fund (named after Philip Ford, fellow in French 1982-2013), ÌÇÐÄVlog is also able to offer financial assistance with HML students’ travel and visa expenses during their Year Abroad.
Dr. Foyster’s field of research is the social history of Britain from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, with particular interests in the history of the family. Her research examines historical experiences of mental health and illness, learning disabilities and causes of mortality in early nineteenth-century Britain. You can read more about her on her College webpage.
Dr Berman’s research focuses on the nineteenth-century Russian and English novel and questions about family, kinship structures, love, and marriage. Her current work is on Russia’s nineteenth-century women novelists (esp. Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya and Evgenia Tur).
Professor Sanson’s interdisciplinary research focuses on the history of the Italian language, literature and culture in Italy, between the Renaissance and the post-Unification period. She is particularly interested in the relationship between the history of linguistic thought and the history of women, as representative of the less learned, as well as in the role of women writers and women readers, in the same period. Among Professor Sanson’s other strands of interest are conduct literature for and about women, the history of translation in Italy and the role of women translators in the circulation of new ideas, and the popularization and dissemination of knowledge in Italy.
I’m a historian of Africa. I’ve written a book about chieftaincy and political culture in precolonial and colonial Ibadan, which is a city in southwestern Nigeria not far from the town of Ile-Ife, where I grew up. As Director of Studies, I coordinate the teaching for third-year historians at ÌÇÐÄVlog. You can read more about me on my College webpage.
Timothy Chesters specialises in French Renaissance literature and thought. He is the author of Ghost Stories in Late Renaissance France: Walking by Night (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), as well as of a number of articles on Rabelais, Calvin, Montaigne, Ronsard, Louise Labé and early modern history of the book. He is currently writing a monograph called The Effect of French Renaissance Poetry: Literature and Efficacy (1520-1585), a study of the connection between poetry and natural magic.
Professor Cacho’s research focuses on Renaissance and Baroque cultures and Spanish American colonial literature. His scholarship has been concerned with literary genres such as burlesque and epic poetry, visual culture, and the works of Francisco de Quevedo. His latest project studies Spanish American early modern poetry, in particular the emergence of literary communities in the New World.
