Studies in Economic and Social History deal with history of everyday life, social and economic changes, institutions and practices. Since industrialisation is the main background variable, both the instruction and research focus primarily on the 19th and 20th centuries, and especially on the phenomena relating to the beginning of industrialisation and their societal effects. Attention is paid principally to understanding and analysing social and economic development in modern societies.

The task of political history is to offer a well-grounded introduction to the contemporary world by using methods of historical research. It provides a scientifically based, overall picture of the background, birth and development of the political and social phenomena of our age. Thus, the temporal focus of political history tends to be the recent past, as in contemporary history, histoire contemporaine, Zeitgeschichte and samtidshistoria.

The topics studied within political history are often fresh enough to have living political connections to present day questions. Political history is often confronted with highly contradictory expectations as it deals with such political actors, phenomena and values that still evoke emotionally loaded opinions among the contemporaries. Therefore, the very objective of political history may seem paradoxical: the discipline must stick to the demands of scientific historiography, but at the same time, it is bound to the present, as contemporary history always is. Indeed, how interpretations of the past are used in present day debates has become an important field of study in political history.