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: Environmental Humanities

Environmental Humanities is an interdisciplinary major that allows you to explore the relationship between nature and culture, environmental values and ethics, and how humans might respond creatively, collaboratively and ethically to address global environmental crises. The Environmental Humanities, as an area of scholarship, has emerged in response to world-wide environmental crises, and brings together disciplines including Aboriginal studies, history, philosophy, literature, creative arts, geography, politics and law, in conjunction with the natural and social sciences. Rapid environmental change has become a hallmark of our contemporary world. It is accompanied by threats to global ecosystems, species extinction, and unsustainable rates of consumption of the earth’s resources. Scientists may have diagnosed these problems, but their causes are human and their solutions will also be human.

In the Environmental Humanities major, you will be taught to understand the ways in which humans are entangled in environmental change. You will also learn how to respond to climate injustices and the complex social and ecological challenges. You will also be exposed to a variety of approaches that help understand and address environmental and climate change. Throughout the major you will explore historical, cultural, political, creative, philosophical, scientific and legal understandings of environmental change and can tailor your subject selection to focus in greater depth on the historical, legal or creative disciplines. When you graduate you will have a deep and critical understanding of the contexts within which environmental crises have arisen and have the tools to evaluate and respond to environmental issues and create new ways of living with our environment.