History of Art
- Ruth Thijssen
- Joe Corfield
Undergraduate and postgraduate
The majority of teaching takes places in Vanburgh College on Campus West, with some sessions taking place at King's Manor in the city centre. Your contact hours will be split between these two locations.
University library and archives - JB Morrell Library and the Raymond Burton Library for Humanities Research.
King’s Manor library - The Wormald, Newton and Newbold collections, major resources for medieval art history, are housed in the King's Manor, as is the Architectural Studies Library, an invaluable source for architectural historians.
Vanburgh College and King’s Manor contain a range of old photographs of British art and York. These are mainly used for teaching, but can be accessed by History of Art Teaching.
Borthwick Institute for Archives - one of the major archive repositories in Britain, holds the records of the Archbishopric of York from the early thirteenth century onwards, and specialises in the study of ecclesiastic institutions.
Undergraduate-specific
Postgraduate-specific
The Humanities Resource Centre is a community hub for cross-disciplinary research, and acts as both a work and social space for postgraduate researchers and academic staff. The space is also open to postgraduate-taught students to a certain extent (it's fine to advertise this on PGT pages).
1st in UK for impact and environment - the support we give to researchers (Times Higher Education’s ranking of the latest REF results, 2021).
8th in the UK for history of art, architecture and design (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2025)
York is =79th for arts and humanities (QS World University Rankings by Subject, 2024).
10th in the UK for history of art (Guardian University Guide 2024)
6th in the UK for history of art, architecture & design (Complete University Guide 2025)
York is a UNESCO City of Media Arts and part of the Creative Cities Network.
Excellent partnerships with museums and galleries.
Key messages about York
York is close to a range of local art resources. Explore internationally significant collections of sculpture in the Henry Moore Institute, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Hepworth Wakefield. Visit Yorkshire's surviving works of Anglo-Saxon art, the York area's later medieval sculptures in wood and stone, and the impressive York Minster.
Undergraduate and postgraduate
History of Art student blogs (UG and PGT)
Undergraduate-specific
Postgraduate-specific