Objectives
- Contributing to the creation of new knowledge on national and global reality.
- Providing students access to an updated and critical knowledge of the main historiographic trends.
- Providing the necessary theoretical-methodological tools for the interpretation of this reality based on history.
- Enabling students to conduct their research according to the relations between history and other fields of social science.
Study Plan
The curriculum is divided in three areas: theory, methodology and seminars, and it is designed for three semesters. Each semester is composed of three courses. The curriculum is complemented with conferences and other extra-curricular activities.
Theoretical Area
The purpose of the theoretical courses is to analyze and discuss the main innovations and weaknesses of the production of historical knowledge during the 20th and 21st century. One fundamental element in the education of historians is the knowledge of analytical tools offered by other fields of social research, such as sociology, philosophy, economy, and anthropology. This series of courses provides students with the necessary theoretical basics to conduct research.
Methodological Area
While the Master's Degree has a sound theoretical component, it is necessary to offer a venue for empirical research where, based on case studies and concrete exercises, this theoretical knowledege is put to the test and reflected upon. Through a series of practical exercises, this area enables the development of methodological skills in the field of social science. Also, a reflection is made on the role of archive sources in the creatin of history, as well as an analysis of the importance of sources such as press and media in the work of historians.
Elective Seminars Area
The Master's Degree in History offers an area of elective seminars that allows students to be educated according to their research interests in the Department. These seminars are venues where professors of the Department and guest lecturers present and consolidate their own research topics with a theoreticla and empirical approach. In other words, seminars represent useful exercises for the education of students in essential issues of contemporary historiography, as well as for the academic development of the professors in the University.
Research or Focus Areas
The History Department has three research groups classified by Colciencias in category A and several categories approved by the Center of Socio-Cultural and International Studies of the School of Social Science. The following are the lines of research developed by the faculty in the Department.
Contemporary History
History as an area of research has been typically associated with the study of the past. However, since the 1960s a new field of history has emerged: the study of the present. This Histoire du Temps Présent for the French, Zeitgeschichte for the Germans, which we could summarize as an non-conjuncture analysis of the conjuncture, is a legitimate field in international historical production. This field is focus of special attention by professors of the Department in lines of research and studies on: globalization, international relations, culture of illegality, especially in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Colombia in contemporary times.
History of Science
Scientific knowledge and technological development have played a determining role in the creation of the modern world. Any attempt to study and understand history, culture, economy and society in general, must include in their analysis the social processes that bring about scientific and technological changes.
The systematic study of history of science and technology and their close relations with economic, ideological, religious and political factors, is a relatively recent activity. In the last decades, however, the studies about science, technology and society have remarkably expanded and have become a venue for discussion and convergence among areas such as philosophy, history, sociology, natural science and engineering. Particularly the professors in the Department who work along these lines have paid special attention to the relation between science and empire.
Colonial History
The relevance of colonial history revolves around the necessary dialogue between present and past. In this sense, the understanding of colonial past is considered a possibility to enlighten current social processes. The studies on the cultural parameters of the native population, as well as Africans and Europeans, who migrated by force or voluntarily, the mixture of races in the Colombian context, political culture, the development of mining, processes of territory appropriation, organization of territory, as ways to control the population, as well as responses to domination, are some of the expressions of colonial life, whose consequences on social and cultural life can be observed in the present.
Afro-Colombian Studies
This line of research is devoted to research in different realities related to the African diaspora in Colombia. The group has developed historical and anthropological research, whose topics comprise areas as diverse as: gender, territory, social, geographic, religious and symbolic issues.
Conceptions of Conquest
It is difficult to find an event with as profound and diverse repercussions on Western history as the discovery and conquest of the American continent. Among the multiple approaches through which the subject can be analyzed, it can also be understood as an event that questioned a certain view of the world, of the conquering society, which led to a rethinking based on the basic notion of man, society and political and religious institutions. This had repercussions not only in Europe but it also influenced the general notion of nature of man since the beginning of the Colony.
Intellectuals and Catholicism in Colombia
This line of research focuses on Colombian catholicism, covering a period starting in 1850 and extending to present day. It studies issues like secularism, secularization processes, education, education of intellectuals, cultural history, the Catholic press, and the importance of the Church in current debates.
History, Nature and Race
The geographic axis of this line of research is the Colombian Pacific coast, and focusing on developing a type of history that includes nature and explores how race is a fundamental category in understanding how Latin American nations have been built. The framework is environmental history, political ecology and social history, and it includes the role of marginal regions within nations.
Economic History and Social Protection Systems
The focus of this line of research is to analyze how societies establish their social protection systems. Reflections on this field aim not only at investigate issues related to the way societies answer the questions, what should be protected?, who should be protected? and, with which resources?, but also the interaction among political, social and economic elements that support a specific social protection system.
Model Program
First Semester
Second Semester
Third Semester
First Semester Deepening
Second Semester Deepening
Third Semester Deepening
Alumni Profile
The Master's Degree in History focuses on the education of researchers of history who will be able to contribute with new knowledge on the Colombia, Latin American and global historical processes. Graduates will have an appropiate command of theoretical, methodological and practical tools of this area. Similarly, they will have developed communication skills with academic peers in different areas of social science. They will be professionals able to work in research and teaching activities, media consulting, and collaboration in areas such as political and cultural analysis.