HASS Research Ranking Highlights

• 53rd in the world - Social Science and Management (up from 57th in 2025)
• 79th in the world - Arts and Humanities (up from 109th in 2025)
   
• 31st in the world - Development Studies (up from 45th in 2025)
• 38th in the world - Archaeology (up from 47th in 2025)
• 41st in the world - Education & Training (41st in 2025)
• 59th in the world - English Language and Literature (down from 58th in 2025)
• 79th in the world - Linguistics (down from 63rd in 2025)

The QS Top University Rankings for 2026 measure a university’s performance across a number of indicators including academic reputation, teaching quality and research output.

• Ranked 39 in Education studies, placing 4th in Australia.
• Ranked 83 in Social Sciences,  placing 5th in Australia.
• Ranked 101-125 in Arts and Humanities, placing 5th in Australia

The Times Higher Education subject rankings 2026 include more than 2000 universities across 115 countries and regions.

• 39th in Arts and Humanities
• 42nd in Education and Educational Research
• 30th in Social Sciences and Public Health

The U.S. News Best Global Universities rankings assess over 2,000 institutions worldwide, including subject-specific rankings across 51 academic areas based on research performance and reputation. These rankings highlight global leaders in academic research across a wide range of disciplines.

• Sociology placed 41st in the world and 2nd in Australia
• Education placed 26th in the world and 2nd in Australia
• Political Science placed 3rd in Australia

The full methodology for 2024 is available here, including definitions of all indicators and indicator weightings for each subject area.

The National Taiwan University (NTU) Ranking has published its latest Overall, Field, and Subject rankings of world universities based on the performance of their scientific papers.

• 17th in the world in the 'Social Sciences, General' catergory
• 4th in Oceania in the 'Social Sciences, General' catergory

The data also places our disciplines 33^rd in the world in relation to the number of publications belonging to the top 10% in their field.

• 4th in Oceania for number of Top 10 publications in the Social Sciences and Humanities
• 17th in the world for the number of research publications in the Social Sciences and Social Sciences
• 33rd in the world in relation to the number of Top 10 publications in the Social Sciences and Humanities

The Leiden Ranking is based on bibliographic data on scientific publications, in particular on articles published in scientific journals. More information here. 

Specialised fields of research rated at the highest level (5):

• Studies in Human Society
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Literary Studies
• History and Philosophy of Specific Fields.

Excellence in Research (ERA) is Australia’s national research evaluation framework. It identifies excellence across Australia’s higher education institutions and compares Australia's university research effort against international benchmarks.