Classics and Ancient History Department (original) (raw)

Our Durham Department of Classics & Ancient History is a large and successful department. We consistently rank as one of the top Classics and Ancient History Departments in the UK for research and teaching, and came 6th in the 2024 QS World University Rankings.

Our degrees offer both academic rigour and an outstanding student experience. We are regularly among the top Classics departments in the UK for graduate employability. In 2019 we were awarded an Advance HE Athena Swan Bronze Award. This marks our ongoing commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusiveness. We are proud that our Department is highly international, forward-looking, and in many ways genuinely diverse in its makeup and outlook.

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4th

4th The Complete University Guide 2025

4th in the UK for overall research quality in REF 2021

6th in the World

6th in the World in the 2024 QS World University Rankings by Subject

3rd in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2025

Study with us

We offer undergraduate students three Single Honours programmes - Classics, Classical Civilisation, and Ancient History - and two Joint Honours programmes with the Departments of History and Archaeology.

As a centre of world-class research, we have a strong commitment to postgraduate provision for MA and PhD students in all areas of Classics & Ancient History

Undergraduate Study

Our undergraduate programmes offer students a very wide range of modules, designed to emphasise the unity as well as the exciting variety of Greek and Roman antiquity.

Female Classics professor and students looking at books

Postgraduate study

We welcome applications to the Taught MA programme, or applications for research MAs and PhDs in any of the (many) research specialities represented in the Department.

Student satisfaction

Our Department recorded an outstanding 90.7% overall student satisfaction in the National Student Survey 2021.

We are distinctive in our commitment to training in the Classical languages. Our language modules develop the skills of those with previous experience, and enable students with no prior training to take up Latin and Greek at all levels.

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Four students sit at a table in a library with an open laptop, looking at each other and laughing

Our research

Watch our most recent research video

Dr Mara Nicosia talks about her research into Syriac rhetoric in "Antony of Tagrit: a detective story"

More research videos

Our staff

Our academic staff specialise in a broad range of artistic, historical, literary, linguistic, cultural, and philosophical aspects of the Graeco-Roman world. We have further expertise in the wider Ancient Mediterranean and Near East.

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Explore our department

What's new?

Student blogs and social media

Explore our Durham University Classics Society blog, packed full of interesting classical and classically-inspired articles.

Highlights

Social feeds

Department of Classics and Ancient History

38 North Bailey
Durham
DH1 3EU

+44 (0)191 3343170

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