Medieval and modern history has been studied at Oxford for longer than at almost any other university: a Regius Professor of Modern History was first appointed in 1724, and undergraduate examinations began in 1850.
Today the University is one of the world's most encompassing centres for the study of history. The faculty has about a hundred permanent teaching staff, nearly twelve hundred undergraduates, and almost five hundred graduate students attracted from many countries. Historians also abound in other departments. At their service is the Bodleian library and its ancillaries, which count among the greatest of research collections.
They work and live in forty-five college communities, in buildings ranging from honey-coloured medieval quads, to the most controversial of post-modernist architecture, all set within the lively, thriving, and beautiful city of Oxford.