The Department ofHistory was established in 1958, a year after the inception of the University ofGorakhpur. Since then, the department has been headed by Historians of greatrepute and eminence Dr. Hira Lal Singh was the founder Head of the Departmentfollowed by Prof. Hari Shankar Srivastava, Prof. K.P. Mishra, Prof. A.K.Mittal, Prof. A.K. Srivastava, Prof. S.N.R. Rizvi, Prof. Poonam Pant, Prof.Himanshu Chaturvedi, Prof. Nidhi Chaturvedi. Prof. M.S.Tripathi, Prof. C. B.Gupta ‘Ankur’ is Head of the Department at present.
At the graduation levelthe department offers courses in Medieval and Modern Indian History
along with EuropeanHistory in Modern times. It is a three years degree course program. At the postgraduatelevel the syllabus has been thoroughly revised to suit the newly structuredsemester system since 2012-13, offering specialization in either MedievalIndian History or Modern Indian History. In the year 2020-21, the wholesyllabus has been revised again to fulfil the needs of CBCS pattern. However,the new syllabus is designed to cater additional academic needs of the studentsat PG level and compulsory papers like Indian Historiography and IndianNational Movement. Besides this,European History, American History, History of the Far East Asia,
History of West Asia,History of Nepal are also a part of the semester program as optional
papers. Department hasalso introduced programs on Maratha History and Gender studies at PG level.
Late Prof. Lal BahadurVarma, Prof. T.P. Chand, Prof. Ashok Srivastava, Prof. R.C. Roy, Prof. S.D.Dwivedi was associated with the department.
At the research levelthe faculty members are thoroughly engaged in guiding the Ph.D scholars and therange of historical enquiries is as broad as logical human activity permits inthe given infrastructure. Since inception, the department has guided more thanone hundred and fifty research scholars.