Brief History and Profile
The Department of History is one of the oldest Departments of the University Founded in 1961 with an emphasis on teaching and research activities. The range of teaching and research include Medieval, Modern, Contemporary Indian History, South Asian Studies and Regional History with special emphasis on Haryana and Punjab studies.
The Department has had an illustrious faculty and many areas of Indian History/Regional History have been defined by the researches done by them. Those who rendered invaluable services include Professor V.N. Datta, Professor Buddh Parkash, Professor Romila Thapar, Professor R.C. Jauhri, Professor S.B.P. Nigam, Professor K.C. Yadav and Professor S.C. Mittal, Prof. G.Khurana, Prof. K.L. Tuteja, Prof. Sunita Pathania, Prof. Raghuvindra Tanwar and Prof. R.S. Sangwan. We may boast of the fact that Professor V.N. Datta and Professor Romila Thapar were among the founding faculty members of our Department.
The Department offers highly specialized courses, namely M.A. (History), M. Phil (History) and Ph.D. So far above 100 Ph.D. and nearly 630 M. Phil Degrees have been awarded to the scholars of the Department. At the moment, 20 scholars are pursuing their research for Ph.D. A sustainable numbers of students of the Department have qualified the JRF, NET and SLET test and have also obtained the prestigious JRF of the Indian Council of Historical Research and University Grants Commission. The Department has executed about a dozen important projects on regional and national history in the past. Some of the publications produced by the members of the teaching faculty have won national as well as international appreciation. Besides the Department has organized a number of Seminars on important themes particularly related to regional history and the Indian national movements. Visiting fellows are regularly invited from different Universities and special and guest lectures are conducted from time to time. For the last two and half decades the Department has been successfully conducting the Refresher Courses for the colleges and Universities teachers.
Notably, some of the faculty members have been conferred the prestigious Research Awards/ Fellowships and other Awards/Positions by different Institutes, Agencies and Government etc. For instance, Prof. Raghuvindra Tanwar and Prof. S. K. Chahal (present Chairman of the Department) have got the prestigious U.G.C. Research Award during their academic careers.Prof. K.L. Tuteja and Prof. S. K. Chahal have got the prestigious Fellowship of Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Recently, Prof. Raghuvindra Tanwar has been conferred the prestigious Padma Shri Award by the Government of India. Prior to it, he was appointed as Chairman of Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi on 5 January 2022.