Graduate Programs

Our graduate programs are designed to facilitate the development of methodological and critical skills required to pursue history at a high academic level. Our faculty embodies a diverse range of geographical, thematic, and theoretical interests. We offer excellent opportunities for supervising work in Canadian History, Indigenous History, Early Modern history, Modern Europe, the Atlantic world (especially Africa/the Caribbean/Latin America), the Middle East, South Asia, and U.S. History. The Department’s research interests include broad, transnational thematic areas, such as women’s and gender history, family history, religious history, migration studies, and the history of the book. Our faculty are also on the forefront of emerging areas, including environmental history, state formation, history of food and drink, the body and sexuality, and public memory.

Our our two-year degree is designed to prepare students equally well for careers in public history and for doctoral studies in History and related disciplines.

Our innovative PhD History program combines traditional academic strengths in historical theory, historiography and primary research. Award-winning faculty with national and international reputations ensure excellence in training and supervision of students. Our faculty supervises dissertations in the specialized fields listed below. The PhD program collaborates with the Institute of Political Economy in offering interested students a collaborative PhD with a Specialization in Political Economy. There is also a Concentration in Public History available.

A first of its kind in Canada, Carleton University’s collaborative PhD with Specialization in African Studies is designed for graduates of the master’s programs in the humanities and the social sciences who, through interdisciplinary research, wish to enrich and deepen their training in a particular discipline or area of study by developing expertise in African Studies.

Data Science is the next frontier of information technology but few universities offer programming in this area. Carleton’s new collaborative master’s in Data Science is geared at graduate students and high-tech professionals who are interested in understanding how to analyze and use ‘big data’ sets collected by governments, industry, NGOs etc. for purposes such as generating personal recommendations for online shopping, improving the efficiency of health care delivery or predicting national security threats.

The Collaborative MA in Digital Humanities gives students the opportunity to explore the ways in which digital technologies are changing how we understand art, film, music, literature and popular culture, how we develop new forms of collective memory, and how we create global communities and intercultural dialogue. Students will learn to think critically by undertaking original research involving the latest theories, methods and technologies, while collaborating with other students and faculty across Carleton and with community partners. Through our practicum component, students can acquire hands-on experience with innovative tools for the computational analysis of cultural texts, and gain exposure to new methods for analyzing social movements and communities enabled by new media networks.

The History Department at Carleton offers the only Ph.D. program in Public History in Canada. Ideally located in the National Capital Region, our Public History Ph.D. students have ready access to numerous national museums, federal departments, cultural institutions, and Library and Archives Canada. Students in the Concentration learn the specific scholarly and professional concepts associated with public history, learn about the history of public history, and also learn how to produce public history in both academic and non-academic settings.