UCL Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences

19th century

The Chair of Political Economy at UCL was created in 1827 in memory of David Ricardo, establishing the first Department of Economics in England. The first holder of the Chair was John Ramsay McCulloch. In 1833 Alexander Maconochie was appointed as Professor of Geography at UCL, the first such appointment in the British Isles. In 1853 Gottfried Kinkel gave a series of lectures on medieval art at UCL. William Stanley Jevons held a professorship of economics at UCL between 1876 and 1880.

20th century

In 1922 Tancred Borenius became the first holder of the UCL Chair in History of Art, a post he held until his death in 1948. He was succeeded by Rudolf Wittkower from 1948 to 1956 and Ernst Gombrich from 1956 to 1959. Ronald Fisher was Professor of Eugenics at UCL between 1933 and 1939. Ian Christie was a Reader of History from 1960 to 1966, Professor of History from 1966 to 1979, Chairman of the History Department from 1975 to 1979 and Astor Professor of British History from 1979 to 1984. Between 1962 and 1972 Peter Ucko was Lecturer in Anthropology at UCL. Sir Robert Rees Davies was a lecturer in the Department of History between 1963 and 1976. UCL merged with the Institute of Archaeology in 1986. The Constitution Unit was established in April 1995. The School of Slavonic and East European Studies merged with UCL in 1999.

21st century

In May 2003 a team from the Department of Anthropology published a major piece of research on the possible link between the amount of food that a mother has to eat and the gender of her children. In May 2006 a report co-authored by James Banks of the Department of Economics was published which concluded that rates of diseases such as diabetes, lung cancer and high-blood pressure were up to twice as high among Americans aged between 55 and 64 as among English people of the same age group. Between 1997 and 2007 Lindsey Hughes was a Professor of Russian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies. In May 2009 a major report on the health risks posed by global warming co-authored by Mark Maslin, the director of the Environment Institute, was published. In January 2010 Simon Corcoran and Benet Salway of the History Department discovered fragments of the Gregorian Codex, an important Roman law code that previously had been thought lost forever.

Departments

The Faculty currently comprises the following departments:

Research

The Faculty is closely involved with the following research centres and institutes:

Rankings

In the 2013 Academic Ranking of World Universities, UCL is ranked joint 51st-75th in the world (and joint 6th in Europe) for Social Sciences.

In the 2013 QS World University Rankings, UCL is ranked 22nd in the world (and 6th in Europe) for Social Sciences & Management.

In the 2014 QS World University Rankings by Subject, UCL is ranked 17th in the world (and 4th in Europe) for Economics and Econometrics, 7th in the world (and 5th in Europe) for Geography & Area Studies, 32nd in the world (and 13th in Europe) for History, 47th in the world (and 12th in Europe) for Politics and International Studies, and 47th in the world (and 9th in Europe) for Statistics & Operational Research.

In the 2012-2013 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, UCL is 11th in the world (and 3rd in Europe) for Social Sciences.