The Tufts PhD Program in History is a small, targeted program that trains historians in South Asian history and Global History (currently on hold). It is a highly regarded program with an excellent track record of job placement. Please note that we are currently accepting applications for South Asian history only.

Program Outcomes

As a student in the PhD Program in History, you will learn to read foundational texts and critically examine trends within the field. You will gain experience with major methodologies of historical writing and explore different research practices, while making valuable contributions to the field. The program culminates in the PhD dissertation.

Application Requirements

Application fee
Resume/CV
Official TOEFL, IELTS, or Duolingo English Test, if applicable
Transcripts
Three letters of recommendation
Proficiency in one language other than English
Personal statement (describe your planned dissertation field)
Writing sample (a statement of intent, detailing your planned dissertation field)

Prospective applicants should be in contact with Professors Ayesha Jalal and Kris Manjapra for the Modern South Asia program, and with Professor Elizabeth Foster for Global History.

Tuition and Financial Aid

See Tuition and Financial Aid information for GSAS Programs.

Faculty

Elizabeth Foster

Professor

Modern France in the World, Colonial West Africa

Academic Leave

Rachel Applebaum

Associate Professor

Modern Russia and Eastern Europe, the cultural Cold War, global communism, transnational history

Ina Baghdiantz-McCabe

Professor and Darakjian Jafarian Chair of Armenian History

Armenia and Cross-Cultural World Early Modern Europe

Virginia Drachman

Arthur Stern, Jr. Professor of American History

Women in the Professions in America; GIrlhood in Post World War II America; Love and War in World War II; Medicine and Society in Amrica

David Ekbladh

Associate Professor

U.S. in the World, International History, Modern U.S. History

Kendra Field

Associate Professor

Nineteenth-century U.S., African American, Native American

Khaled Fahmy

Edward Keller Professor of North Africa and the Middle East

Military, medical, legal and social history of the modern Middle East

Ayesha Jalal

Mary Richardson Professor

South Asia, the Muslim World

Diego Luis

Assistant Professor

Colonial Latin America, Global History, Pacific World, Racial Formation, Diasporic Histories

Kris Manjapra

Professor

Global Black Studies African Diaspora; Modern Caribbean; Modern South Asia Transnational and Global History

David Proctor

Distinguished Senior Lecturer

Late Antique & Medieval Western Europe, Byzantium, Southeastern Europe, Papal-Imperial relations

Alisha Rankin

Professor

Early Modern Europe, the History of Science and Medicine, Women's History, the History of the Body and Sexuality

James Rice

Walter S. Dickson Professor of English and American History and Department Chair of History

Early American, Native American, and Environmental History

Reed Ueda

Professor

Industrial and Urban U.S., Immigration

Man Xu

Associate Professor

Middle Period China, Late Imperial China, Women's History, the History of Material Culture

Tracks

Tufts offers a PhD in history in two tracks:

Modern South Asia History

Tufts offers doctoral training in Modern South Asian history from the mid-eighteenth to the twentieth century. Successful PhD candidates have gone on to obtain positions in some of the most prestigious institutions of American academe. Doctoral students in this program conduct intense and focused research into the most pressing questions of South Asian scholarship today. Students in this field also partake of the active intellectual life surrounding South Asian studies in the Boston area, including the Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies.

Global History

Global History begins with the premise that the world is an ever changing, interconnected system. Students work in comparative and connected frameworks with scholars whose areas of study include Europe, Africa, Latin America, North Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the United States. This program explores formations and processes such as colonialism, empire, globalization, and diaspora, that situate places, social groups, and events beyond the limiting conceptual framework of the nation-state or the world region.