About the Faculty

At the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, we generate knowledge across a wide a range of disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, art history, classics, communication, criminology, cultural studies, drama, history, international relations, journalism, languages, linguistics, literature, media studies, music, political science, philosophy, sociology, and world religions.

These disciplines have never mattered more. We live in an age of artificial intelligence that can process information at a scale and speed no human can match. What it cannot do is understand what it means to be human: to grieve, to create, to dissent, to imagine otherwise. That is the work of the humanities, arts and social sciences. At a moment when the boundary between human and machine intelligence is being redrawn, the questions our Faculty asks — about ethics, culture, power, identity, and meaning — are not peripheral to the future. They are central.

Our researchers are at the forefront of their fields, contributing to public debate, shaping policy, and producing the kind of knowledge that endures. Our teachers bring that research directly into the classroom, preparing graduates who are not just career-ready but capable of leadership across every sector of public and private life. And through UQ Arts — connecting students, creators, curators, scholars, and communities — we contribute to the cultural life of Queensland and beyond.

Knowledge leadership, for us, is never solitary. It happens in collaboration: with scientists and other scholars, with industry and government, and above all with the communities for whom a more just, informed, and humane world is not an abstraction but a pressing need.

Professor Heather Zwicker
Executive Dean
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences