After graduation and marrying Arlene Tigar, he pursued, thanks to a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, a PhD in history at Harvard University.
Dissatisfied with his research on an unknown French journalist, he was amazed to discover in his final year at Harvard that history has more tantalizing subjects to offer.
He credits the visiting scholar, Theodore Zeldin, for whom he was an assistant, of revealing how history could examine the passions and practices of everyday life.
[4] As a socio-cultural historian of medicine, he drew upon legal, medical, archival, newspaper, and literary sources over a range of issues from birth control, abortion, impotence (erectile dysfunction), masculinity, and eugenics in Western contexts such as France, UK, and North America.
[9] As the Molson jury explained: 'Angus McLaren is an imaginative and prolific historian who has increased significantly our understanding of sexuality, gender and reproduction, and other related topics'.