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: Politics

The Politics major will train you to look at how power is used in different systems of government, at the way states relate to one another in the international system, and at the relationships between local, national and global institutions and how they operate. In this major you will compare the various institutions, processes, beliefs and cultures that societies have developed for settling conflict, ordering priorities and distributing wealth. By its nature, politics is an argumentative discipline, so you will learn how to navigate competing arguments and weigh up competing accounts of what actually happens with what ought to happen.

Undertaking a Politics major at La Trobe will connect you to experts in political theory, nationalism, democracy and democratisation, as well as Australian politics and institutions, international relations of the Asia-Pacific, and the politics of modern China, Russia and Southeast Asia.