Liberal Arts Durham University

Overview

The Liberal Arts BA degree complements Durham University’s Single and Joint Honours programmes, enabling you to study modules in up to four subjects in, and beyond, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. If you are looking for the freedom to follow your intellectual interests, wherever these might take you, then Liberal Arts might be the right degree for you.

Key facts

In Liberal Arts, it is not only possible to study any subject in the Arts and Humanities, but also most subjects in the Social Sciences. It is possible, therefore, for students to combine History and Politics, for example, but also to study subjects in combinations less likely to be available in a Joint Honours programme, such as Theology and Anthropology, or Music and Sociology, or Philosophy and Geography.

Students on this Liberal Arts BA degree at Durham University design their own programme of study, so depending on their choices they learn through a combination of lectures, seminars, tutorials, practical classes, workshops, language classes, informal but scheduled one-on-one support, and self-directed learning, such as research, reading, and writing.

All of these are supported by a state of the art virtual learning environment, Durham University Online (DUO). Seminars, workshops, and practical classes are much smaller groups than lectures, small enough to allow one-on-one interaction with a professor or lecturer. This emphasis on small-group teaching reflects a conscious choice to enhance the quality of the learning experience rather than the quantity of formal sessions.

The subjects studied in Liberal Arts are designed to feature fewer formal sessions and more independent research as students move from their first to their final year. Small-group teaching and one-on-one attention from the personal academic advisor (provided for all students when they enter the degree) are part of the learning experience throughout, but by the final year classroom time gives way, to some extent, to independent research, including a capstone dissertation—supported by one-on-one supervision—that makes up a third of final year credits.