Public History

Overview

Public history has been operating since the 1970s as a subdiscpline of history, but also as a separate academic discipline. It is called the history "for the people, by the people, with the people, of the people" and deals with all the aspects of history outside the formal education (also academic education). It operates for many years at the universities world-wide and enjoys considerable popularity among the students. 

The history itself concentrates on examining the past (aiming at answering the question "how was it there?") while public history conducts research on how the knowledge about the past is present in the social consciousness and how it is (and may be) instilled in this consciousness, with the central question of "what do (did/will) the people know about how it was?" It focuses on the historical memory, which is rather marginal in the "traditional" history research. 

A public history graduate will have knowledge about the ways the knowledge about the past is present in the public sphere and the methods of influencing those ways. He/she will be able to collect, preserve, process and promote the heritage of the past in the conscious and competent way and to research how the others do that. 

Career

These competences will bring him to employment in the institutions engaged in preserving, forming and propagating the memory of the past and involved in the areas of:

• the politics of history - political parties, local governments, societies, governmental agencies and other state institutions

• extracurricular history education - libraries, local and national institutions of education

• combination of history and art history - museums, open-air museums, creative art groups and companies (e.g. as experts of historical movies, games, events)

• combination of history and media (publishing houses, press, new media, webpages, thematic TV channels)

• archive management and oral history (private people, local government)

• international cooperation (e.g. European institutions)

Graduates of the Public History program at University of Wroclaw will also have an option to continue their education at the PhD programs in the humanities.