Program Overview

An arts/science degree builds your knowledge and skills across creative and technical areas to expand your career prospects in fields such as environmental science, humanities, research, health and social sciences.

Your arts and science studies are divided equally across this four-year double degree, giving you the opportunity to explore topics from both disciplines that reflect your interests and goals. Choose from arts subjects like anthropology, languages, archaeological and heritage studies or philosophy and combine these with studies in scientific areas such as botany, microbiology, data science, zoology and more.

Throughout your arts and science subjects, you'll have access to purpose-built teaching and research facilities and work alongside some of Australia's leading educators. Subjects across both our arts and science disciplines offer a balance of theoretical knowledge and practical experience, giving you the skills you need to adapt to today's changing jobs landscape.

Build skills in problem-solving, communication and collaboration – all highly sought after by employers – then use these skills to come up with innovative solutions to real-world problems. Whether it's protecting endangered animals, discovering new ways to treat disease, shaping the political landscape, fighting climate change, or addressing global challenges, you'll be ready to pursue your dream career by tailoring your double degree with a mix of majors, minors and electives.

You'll learn:

• Creativity: Tap into your creative side to unlock new ideas and innovative solutions.
• Critical thinking: Develop your critical thinking skills to analyse and respond to complex issues.
• Scientific inquiry: Learn how to study the world around you using scientific methods that address unanswered questions.
• Communication: Learn how to connect, communicate and collaborate with a range of audiences in both written and verbal formats.
• Lab and fieldwork skills: Gain technical skills in both the laboratory and the field to understand how to collect and analyse data.
• Emotional intelligence: Explore and understand what drives our decision making and learn how to connect to others with emotion and intelligence.

Major: English

In the English major you will encounter a variety of literary forms, from the short story to the novel, plays, poetry and memoir and read a wide range of texts spanning some 500 years of literary history from Shakespeare to Alexis Wright. The subjects available to you in this major will help you develop ideas in literary history, literary theory and contemporary critical approaches while also providing a focused study of literary genres, periods and regions. Critical and creative practices are often linked in the English discipline, with understanding gained through one mode sustaining the other. By delving deeply into texts, you will discover some of the complexities of language and the ways in which culture, thought and writing have shaped and continue to shape each other.

In this major you will be taught to analyse literature in English from around the world, addressing key issues of identity, representation, conflict, desire, authorship and ethics. You will be encouraged to reflect on your own reading habits and to travel beyond the limits of lived experience, extending the capacity for empathy or learning to sit with difference. Reading in this way is a vital means of knowing ourselves as individuals and as part of our wider community.