UCL Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences

The UCL Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences is one of the 11 constituent faculties of University College London (UCL). The current dean is Stephen Smith.

The Chair of Political Economy at UCL was created in 1827 in memory of David Ricardo, establishing the first Department of Economics in England. The first holder of the Chair was John Ramsay McCulloch. In 1833 Alexander Maconochie was appointed as Professor of Geography at UCL, the first such appointment in the British Isles. In 1853 Gottfried Kinkel gave a series of lectures on medieval art at UCL.William Stanley Jevons held a professorship of economics at UCL between 1876 and 1880.

In 1922 Tancred Borenius became the first holder of the UCL Chair in History of Art, a post he held until his death in 1948. He was succeeded by Rudolf Wittkower from 1948 to 1956 and Ernst Gombrich from 1956 to 1959.Ronald Fisher was Professor of Eugenics at UCL between 1933 and 1939.Ian Christie was a Reader of History from 1960 to 1966, Professor of History from 1966 to 1979, Chairman of the History Department from 1975 to 1979 and Astor Professor of British History from 1979 to 1984. Between 1962 and 1972 Peter Ucko was Lecturer in Anthropology at UCL.Sir Robert Rees Davies was a lecturer in the Department of History between 1963 and 1976. UCL merged with the Institute of Archaeology in 1986.The Constitution Unit was established in April 1995. The School of Slavonic and East European Studies merged with UCL in 1999.