Humanities BA(Hons)

Course in brief

If you want to change the world you live in, while challenging yourself, then this is the degree for you.

The Humanities degree at Brighton draws on philosophy, history, culture, literature and critical political studies to investigate the major challenges of living in the contemporary world. There are diverse study choices, experts in all the major humanities subjects and a critical environment where guest lecturers are frequent. Numerous student debates, events and engagement with the role of the humanities in the future of our world are central to this degree.

Studying on this degree you will benefit from our unique focus on small group teaching, interdisciplinary study and a carefully designed degree which builds knowledge and skills progressively.

Key facts

Location Brighton: Grand Parade

UCAS code LV00

Full-time 3 years

Book your open day place

Meet our students, see our accommodation and find out more about your course.

Applying for 2017

Places are available on this course for UK, other EU and international students.

Apply now with UCAS

Entry requirements

A-levels or BTEC
Entry requirements are in the range of A-level BCC–CCC (104–96 UCAS Tariff points), or BTEC Extended Diploma DMM–MMM. Our conditional offers typically fall within this range.

We will generally make you an offer if your predicted grades are at the top of this range. If your predicted grades are towards the lower end of this range we may still make you an offer if you have a good GCSE (or equivalent) profile or relevant non-academic achievements.

International Baccalaureate
27 points.

Access to HE Diploma
Pass with 60 credits overall. Humanities, history or politics courses preferred. At least 45 credits at level 3.

GCSE (minimum grade C or grade 4)
At least English language and maths.

For non-native speakers of English
IELTS 6.0 overall, with 6.0 in writing and a minimum of 5.5 in the other elements.

Interview days
Interview days are held throughout the admissions process. You'll be able to attend a course talk, learn more about the degree you are interested in and have the chance to meet our students. For some courses, a taster lecture is also available. Interviews last 15–20 minutes and are with a member of academic staff. This is an opportunity to discuss your own areas of interest with us, and to demonstrate your desire and capability to study on your chosen course. In some instances these discussions can be held by telephone or Skype.

International equivalencies

International equivalencies by country

Albania
Algeria
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Belarus
Belgium
Bermuda
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Bulgaria
Burma (Myanmar)
Cameroon
Canada
Chile
China
Colombia
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Ecuador
Egypt
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Guyana
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kosovo
Kuwait
Latvia
Lebanon
Liechtenstein
Libya
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Malaysia
Malawi
Malta
Mexico
Moldova
Montenegro
Morocco
Namibia
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Palestinian National Authority
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Russian Federation
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Africa
South Korea
Spain
Sri Lanka
Syria
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Tanzania
Thailand
Tunisia
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United States
Uzbekistan
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

We can help you meet our English language or academic entry requirements.

Visit our language institute

For English language preparation courses.

Visit our International College

For academic preparation courses.

Course in detail

Why study with us?

You will be located in the heart of Brighton’s vibrant cultural quarter joining a unique and intimate learning community.

You will be encouraged to develop a critical and independent attitude through seminars, individual tutorials, lectures and project work.

We are committed to small group teaching to develop excellent oral presentation, debating and listening skills. You’ll be able to raise issues, present arguments and voice your particular intellectual concerns while engaging with diverse opinions in productive debate.

Your final-year project allows you to identify and explore a topic of particular interest to you. You will have regular one-to-one meetings with a supervisor with relevant expertise to discuss your independent research and give you guidance.

You will gain vital transferable skills including independent research management, as well as communicative abilities, that you can use throughout your career.

This degree encourages you to challenge received opinions and as such is good grounding for many different industries including publishing, journalism and political lobbying, but equally provides a solid foundation for further study or research.

Opportunities for activity outside of the curriculum include international conferences with world leading experts; publication in the student blog and in student publications and participation in Humanities Society events.

Year 1

You take six core modules in year 1. Each module has two lectures and one seminar per week, as well as four personal tutorials for every course. You develop political, philosophical, historical and cultural knowledge and begin to explore the key themes of this degree.

Modules

Historical Inquiry
Philosophical Inquiry
Studying Cultures
Democracy: From Athens to Baghdad
Understanding Society in a Global World
Approaching Narratives

Year 2

In year 2 you select your main option for the rest of your degree from 12 possible options. You also take the Critical Traditions module, which deepens your knowledge of the historical, cultural and theoretical origins of the present.

Modules

Critical Traditions
Project Preparation Course
Elective Studies

One of the following OPTIONS followed throughout the year:*

Politics, History and Ideology: The Age of European Dominance 1870-1945 • Cold War/Hot War

Race and Resistance: Race, Conflict and Identity • Racism and Anti-Racist Struggle: the Ethics and Politics of Resistance

Self and Society: Conceptualising Subjectivity/Self • Society: Subject, Subjectivity and Subjection

War, Terror and Democracy: War, Violence and Terror • Contemporary Warfare in the Middle East

Culture and Conflict: Culture and Conflict in the Contemporary World: Critical Approaches • Representation and the Cultural Politics of Conflict

Terror and Terrorism: War, Violence and Terror • Histories of Terror and Terrorism

Globalisation, History and Identity: Experiencing Contemporary Globalisation • Globalisation and History: The Middle East and the West

Global Politics: Movements, Power, Democracy • Justice and Conflict and Development in a Globalising World

Fictions in History: Victorian Gothic: Popular Fiction in Historical Content • Realism, Modernism and Postmodernism

Cultural Memory: Memory, Culture and Narrative • The British Case

Critical Theory and Radical Politics: The Politics of Critique • Structuralism, Post-structuralism and the Politics of Critique

Morality, Politics and the Good Life: Reading Plato’s Republic in a Global Polity • Body Politics

Philosophy and Literature: Reason, Romanticism, Revolution • From Existentialism to Marxism

Politics of the Past

Global Society: Globalisation and the Network Society • Media, Culture, Communication

*Option modules listed are indicative and may be subject to change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Final year

In the final year you continue your option work and undertake a research project that typically results in the writing of a dissertation. Here all your skills, knowledge, and research come together. You challenge received opinions in a persuasive extended argument in both written and oral form.

Modules

Final Project
Continuation of your chosen option

One of the following SPECIAL STUDIES which develop your work from year 2*

Politics, History and Ideology: From Pax Americana to the Ends of History

Race and Resistance: The Politics and Ethics of Inclusion • Exclusion in Israel/Palestine and Systems of Control

Self and Society: Marxisms and Feminisms

War, Terror and Democracy: The Holocaust and Genocide

Culture and Conflict: Narrating the Contested Past: Northern Ireland and South Africa

Terror and Terrorism: War, Terror and Civilians

Globalisation, History and Identity

Global Politics: The Crisis of Global Governance: Global Environmental Politics, Human Rights and Humanitarian Intervention

Fictions in History: Caribbean and African American Writing: 'Race', History, Fiction and Resistance

Cultural Memory

Global Society: The Challenges of Global Society: Global Security and Global Sustainability

Morality, Politics and the Good Life: The Ethics and Politics of Global Society

Philosophy and Literature: From Postsructuralism to Posthumanism

Politics of the Past

Critical Theory and Radical Politics: Bodies in Dispute

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Staff profile

Dr Clare Woodford Course leader

Clare’s research interests include theories of gender, ideology and pedagogy, Marxism and post-Marxism, queer theory, psychoanalysis, democratic struggle, activism and the arts, and performance studies.

Meet the rest of the Humanities staff

Careers and employability

Graduates have taken up careers in the public sector, NGOs, teaching, the caring professions, publishing, journalism, management and personnel.

Alternatively, this degree provides a solid foundation for further postgraduate study with us at the University of Brighton or research careers elsewhere.

Fees and funding

Your fees

UK/EU (full-time) 9,250 GBP

International (full-time) 12,660 GBP

The fees listed here are for full-time courses beginning in the academic year 2017–18. Tuition fees are payable for each year that you study with us.

Where UK/EU students are subject to regulated fees, the annual fee increase cannot exceed the UK government’s maximum regulated tuition fee limit set for the relevant year. For all other students, ie those not subject to regulated fees, tuition fees are subject to a maximum annual increase of the higher of 5% or RPI.

You can find out more about our fees in the the university's student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf).

The tuition fee you have to pay depends on a number of factors including the kind of course you take, and whether you study full- or part-time. If you are studying part-time you will normally be charged on a pro rata basis depending on the number of modules you take.

What's included in the fee?

When costs such as health or DBS checks, or use of specialist materials are incurred as a mandatory requirement of the course they are included in your tuition fee.

You may incur additional costs depending on the optional modules or activities you choose. The cost of optional activities is not included in your tuition fee and you will need to meet this cost in addition to your fees. Before you apply check with the school that provides your course using the contact details in the Find out more tab (at the end of this page) for advice about what is included and what optional costs you could face so you can budget accordingly.

See our finance pages for advice about funding and scholarships as well as further information about fees and advice on international and island fee-paying status.

Location and living here

Location

About Brighton

Brighton has been called the happiest place in the UK, and it’s easy to see why. With five miles of pebble beach, more than 300 pubs and a packed festival calendar, Brighton is the ideal place to spend your student years.

Arts and culture: The Royal Pavilion is the most famous landmark in Brighton, opening its doors to around 400,000 tourists every year. Right next door is the Brighton Dome, the south coast’s premier multi-arts venue, and the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, which holds a diverse collection of decorative arts, textiles and archaeological artefacts.

Festivals: The Brighton Festival is now the largest arts festival in England and a major milestone in the international cultural calendar. Meanwhile, The Great Escape has been established as the UK’s leading event for new music, with over 300 bands playing 30 venues across the city over three days.

Nightlife: Aside from the many nightclubs that line the city’s seafront, student favourites include The Haunt, Concorde 2 and Patterns, which attract leading bands and DJs from around the world. If you don’t feel like dancing, you can take your pick from the many hundreds of pubs and bars that dot the city centre.

Shopping: The quirky North Laine district houses Brighton’s finest collection of boutique shops and independent cafes, while the narrow, winding streets of the South Lanes house collections of jewellery and antiques. Churchill Square is the city’s main shopping centre and serves all of your high street needs.

Sports: Brighton’s seaside location offers the perfect opportunity to try paddle boarding, kayaking and windsurfing. Further into the city, The Level has a skate park for skateboarders and BMX riders to practise their skills.

Campus where this course is taught

Grand Parade campus

Our Grand Parade campus is in the heart of Brighton, across the road from the Royal Pavilion and a five-minute walk from the beach. After your lectures you’ll be right in the city centre, close to all the best pubs, clubs, restaurants and cafes that Brighton has to offer.

The campus is home to a creative community of arts and humanities students, specialising in everything from fashion and textiles to politics and philosophy. It is also the location of the University of Brighton Gallery and Sallis Benney Theatre, which host events throughout the festival season and beyond.

The world-renowned University of Brighton Design Archives are in the basement of Grand Parade and offer extensive resources for the study of British design in the twentieth century. St Peters House, the campus library, is also nearby and houses a specialist collection of arts books and journals.

Accommodation

Brighton

Our Brighton halls of residence are located across the city in Grand Parade, Moulsecoomb, Varley Park and Falmer.

Our Grand Parade campus is in central Brighton and has one hall of residence, Phoenix Brewery, within walking distance. We have around 300 rooms available in Phoenix Brewery, which are all ensuite and self-catered.

Moulsecoomb is two miles from the city centre and also has one hall of residence, Moulsecoomb Place, on campus. All accommodation in Moulsecoomb Place is catered, offering breakfast and an evening meal during term time. There are more than 150 rooms available here, with six to eight rooms per flat.

Varley Park offers the biggest choice of student accommodation with ten halls of residence. The site is four miles from Brighton centre but within walking distance of Falmer train station.

Falmer campus has two halls of residence: Great Wilkins and Paddock Field. Great Wilkins offers 150+ self-catered single rooms and one-bed couples flats, while Paddock Field offers 450+ catered and self-catered single rooms only. All rooms in Falmer are en-suite.

Aside from halls, you have the option of Unihomes, which we let out to our students on behalf of private landlords. The rent covers all utilities and includes £5,000 of contents insurance for your personal belongings.

You can also choose to join the many students who live away from campus in private rented accommodation. We have a list of high-quality, university-endorsed private sector accommodation and can help you find housemates to move in with.

Find out more on our Brighton accommodation webpages and if you have any questions, our accommodation team will be happy to help. You can contact them by email at accommodation@brighton.ac.uk or by telephone on 01273 644100.

Paddock Field

Moulsecoomb Place

Maps

Accommodation

University building

Grand Parade campus map

Unistats

Unistats and key information sets

Unistats is an organisation that collects specific data about university courses in the UK which enables you to compare information that is important in your decision-making when choosing a university. All universities publish Unistats data on their online course pages.

Wherever we can we have provided extra information here to help put the data into context so that it is as useful as possible when you are making decisions.

Programme specification

The programme specification is the official university document for each course. They are updated each year, and give a very detailed breakdown of what your course might look like.

Programme specification