Humanities

Overview

Our Faculty of Humanities is the largest in the University, with around 18,000 students, including approximately 1000 postgraduate research students and around 4000 postgraduate taught students, over 1,000 academic staff and a total income approaching £200m per annum; it is equivalent to a medium-sized university in the UK. We are one of the largest bodies of scholars, students and professional support staff in the world committed to the understanding of the humanities. The vast majority of the disciplines in the Faculty already have international reputations and we aspire to be among the very best of our peers. In many areas of activity we are leading or among the best, and we are determined to improve across the range of our research, teaching and social responsibility activities.

The Faculty's structure, scale and academic range permit all subject areas to flourish and to reach out to one another from a strong disciplinary base. Interdisciplinary activity is nurtured through spontaneous interactions between students and staff as well as planned interdisciplinary research initiatives to address global issues and major challenges such as creating sustainable societies (poverty and inequalities, social diversity and social change, environmental sustainability), better innovation processes, adapting to ageing populations, transforming cities and more effective and humane conflict response.

The Faculty comprises of the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, School of Education, School of Environment and Development, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, School of Law, Manchester Business School, and School of Social Sciences. Our Schools are springboards for increased collaboration throughout the Faculty and for regional, national and international engagement. The Faculty has a broad range of relationships with the other Faculties that encourage research and learning in partnership with Science and Medicine, as well as a growing number of key strategic relationships in the business and cultural sectors and with international partners.

Teaching and learning

Manchester students are bright, enthusiastic and engaged with one in five coming from outside the UK/EU. The Faculty provides students with a learning experience that broadens their knowledge and develops analytical, empirical and critical skills that exercise their minds and allows them to critically analyse and question information; draw on their own valid conclusions from information presented to them and researched by them; equips them as global citizens; and prepares them for employment. Undergraduate and postgraduate programmes are designed and delivered in such a way as to use our research excellence to inform the teaching. In short, our teachers are our researchers. Our programmes are constantly reviewed, enhanced and evolved to meet the changing needs of our students, and refreshed to ensure the most up-to-date material is used. Our teachers, therefore, must be as excellent at teaching as they are at research. The Faculty is the home to the Manchester Enterprise Centre, the Sustainable Consumption Institute, the academic home for the Manchester Leadership Programme to name a few, all of which reflect the Faculty's aim to expose our students to issues, skills and contexts over and above their programmes.

Research

The Faculty enjoys an outstanding international reputation for the quality and impact of our research and increasing research excellence remains a priority. The results of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise confirm that The University of Manchester, compared with other leading universities, is a research powerhouse both in the UK and further afield. Manchester, therefore, ranks among the country's top-performing universities; for example, 62% of our Humanities academics were judged as world-leading or internationally excellent. It is our ambition to increase that to 75% at the REF. The Faculty is the heart of the largest ESRC doctoral training centre in England and is the home of the fourth largest AHRC postgraduate research training block grant. It seeks to expand further its postgraduate provisions in the future.

We provide a world-leading environment and infrastructure and a supportive research culture that stimulates intellectual enquiry and the pursuit of research excellence, breaking new ground and including interdisciplinary work. We value research for its intrinsic worth, aesthetic appeal, cultural contribution, transformative energy, commitment to justice, experimental thought and openness to the world. We have a range of research themes that address major societal challenges for the 21st Century spanning the humanities and sciences that we invest in strategically, and we are able to attract research funding from a broad base of sources to support our long-term research ambitions. Our flagship research centres include the Brooks World Poverty Institute (BWPI), the Centre for Research on
Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC), the Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI), the Institute for Social Change (ISC) with links to Harvard, the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI) and the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR).

Social responsibility

Using the research and teaching that we undertake within humanities, we aim to provide broader benefits to society, locally, nationally and internationally. Our teaching seeks to encourage students to see themselves as citizens who have responsibilities to their communities. This objective is achieved through a commitment to volunteering, social engagement and curriculum activities that focus on developing relationships with our immediate vicinity. Our research is undertaken to the highest standards of ethics and orientates itself to the major challenges facing society. Our major research themes address key challenges facing society: for example, sustainable societies, innovation, humanitarianism and transforming cities.

Cultural assets

The Faculty of Humanities makes a major contribution to the cultural life of Manchester through important partnerships with cultural organisations and a commitment to public cultural events, including music, theatre, creative writing and visual art. The Whitworth Art Gallery, the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, the John Rylands Library and The Manchester Museum are linked to or part of the Faculty of Humanities, providing a significant resource for researchers, students and the public alike. These assets are a central part of the University's and Faculty's commitment to public engagement and social responsibility and with them we welcome thousands of people from the region's diverse communities onto our campus each year.

Find out more about our impact and success here www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk