Course options
Key information
Duration: 4 years full time
UCAS code: Y00F
Institution code: R72
Campus: Egham
The course
BA Liberal Arts (with Integrated Foundation Year)
This course is available to Home (UK) students and students from the EU who meet the English Language requirements.
Our Integrated Foundation Year for Arts and Humanities is a thorough, skills-building course that will give you everything you need to start your study of BA Liberal Arts with confidence.
Arts and Humanities subjects, like Liberal Arts, provide key ways of understanding our complex world, its histories, and current debates facing contemporary society. Identity, political and social conflict, our interaction with new digital and genetic technologies, our stewardship of the environment are all issues where the voice of creative and critical thinking are key. Literary texts, films, plays and digital games offer important ways in which societies have debated - and continue to represent - their values and their futures.
Our Foundation Year sets you up so you’re ready to explore those debates and issues, providing you with opportunities to gain knowledge and understanding of how to approach studying the humanities, including your chosen degree subject. Learning from friendly, expert tutors, you’ll explore modules designed to give you a solid start to your study of arts and humanities subjects, helping you to grow critical skills to explore a range of literary, visual, and cultural forms, including plays, films, and digital media.
Once you have completed your Foundation year, you will normally progress onto the full degree course, BA Liberal Arts. There may also be flexibility to move onto a degree in another department (see end of section, below).
A Liberal Arts degree is ideal for creative and inquisitive individuals who have a wide range of interests. Choosing to take this highly-prized yet rarely available degree at Royal Holloway will provide you with the opportunity to create a bespoke course that is perfectly aligned to your individual interests and passions. Liberal Arts involves an internationally-recognised approach to study that will prepare you for life in our rapidly changing world. Multifaceted, diverse and adaptable graduates are increasingly sought by employers looking for people able to respond quickly and effectively to shifting needs and opportunities.
This degree is truly interdisciplinary and will allow you to have adopt either a concentrated or a broad focus in your studies, as you choose from a vast range of subjects available across the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Core modules in years 1 and 2 will enable you to connect with your fellow Liberal Arts students and provide you with a strong foundation upon which to base your chosen studies, and you will be prompted to think about how to bring different disciplines into conversation with each other. In addition, you will study a Modern European language, either as a beginner or at an advanced level for at least the first year; after that you can choose whether to develop your language skills further throughout your degree. The languages available are French, German, Italian and Spanish.
You will be taught by internationally renowned experts in their fields and be fully supported by a Personal Tutor. This course has a strong emphasis on teamwork alongside individual development and will equip you with skills of critical thinking, creativity and adaptability.
On successful completion of your Foundation Year, you may be able to choose an alternative pathway which could include Single Honours, joint or minor degrees within the Humanities (Classics, Drama, History, English (except pathways with Creative Writing), Media Arts, Comparative Literature and Culture, Philosophy). If you'd like to do this, you may take your Foundation Year Department Based Project in one of the other departments in Humanities.
From time to time, we make changes to our courses to improve the student and learning experience. If we make a significant change to your chosen course, we’ll let you know as soon as possible.
Course structure
Core Modules
Foundation Year
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This core Foundation module offers an inter-disciplinary introduction to a range of concepts of global significance highly relevant for students progressing onto humanities, arts and social science subjects. The lectures, seminars and readings will approach each concept from a variety of humanities, arts and social science perspectives and will involve students exploring different epistemological approaches, including but also beyond, those of their own degree subject.
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This module explores our understanding of the past, and our relationship to it. It considers the ways our sense of the past is constructed, maintained, and mediated by collective memory, tradition, and representation, before moving on to think about how we understand the past through evidence – the material traces that humans have left behind. It explores the distinction between ‘the past’ and ‘history’ and considers how both shape our present and influence our future.
Collective memory, tradition and representation produce a powerful sense of the past which can be significant in shaping people’s ideas about the present. This understanding is often at odds with the approach of historians, who seek to explore the past through evidence and draw conclusions about how people used to live from it. But this module is not just 'about' history: it is about how we know what we know and how this knowledge structures the world around us. We will explore both approaches to the past and consider the difficulties that arise when these ways of knowing produce different versions of that past.
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This module explores the ways in which experiences, identities and social issues are represented in British film. It considers the ways that filmmakers engage with contemporary society and the extent to which films respond to, or act as a catalyst for, social change.
Each week we will explore a different topic through the lens of a specific film. We will contextualise the representation offered and consider how it fits within the longer tradition of filmmaking on that subject.
Since the very earliest days of the cinema, films have captured the public imagination and this module will explore the broader role of film in society. We will consider the cultural significance of film as a form of leisure and as a method of communication and education. We will explore the nature of the relationship between filmmakers and the audience, consider questions of funding and censorship, and place film within the broader context of today’s media.
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In this module, students closely examine, compare and contextualise a range of texts that deal with the theme of learning. The core texts: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Purple Hibiscus (2003); Willy Russell’s play Educating Rita (1980); and Alan Parker’s film, Fame (1980), will be accompanied by a range of extracts from a broad variety of text types, from poetry to philosophy to legal documents. Each week, we will consider a key issue raised by the core text under discussion alongside extracts from other texts. Students will be encouraged to use the methods of Critical Discourse Analysis in their close reading, comparison and contextualisation of the texts.
The module aims to provide students with a flexible and adaptable framework that enables them to read, understand and interpret texts from any discourse area closely, analytically and critically. It will support their understanding of the ways in which different text types function and enable them to identify the way genres provide frameworks for audiences to comprehend discourse, assess the means by which apparently similar aspects of the world can be appreciated and understood from different perspectives or positions, and explore the ways in which discourse is used to constitute a sense of being and identity.
The module will also provide opportunities for students to reflect on their own experiences of and beliefs about learning, and to consider their own learning methods and processes as the Foundation Year progresses. This will support the transition to their degree courses, giving them agency in the process as they think carefully about how they learn, how they might learn more effectively, and how that is affected by cultural, social and economic forces.
- Department Specific Skills
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The aim of the project is to enable students to engage in theoretical work on an agreed specific area relevant to one of the departments within the Humanities. Topics will be proposed by supervisors from which students can state three (rank ordered) preferences or students may propose their own topic subject to agreement. The allocation of project topic and supervisor is carried out with the intention of enabling students to work on their preferred (highest ranked where possible) area. Projects will be completed on the basis of a specification agreed with their supervisor and progress will be monitored against the specification. The project will culminate with a joint Poster Presentation with all students on the Foundation Programme.
Year 1
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This module is the core introduction to the Liberal Arts degree. You will focus on the unifying theme of 'encounters', and engage with some of the distinctive qualities of the course. It will introduce them to some of the ways in which cultures have developed through historical, philosophical and creative 'encounters', dialogue, tension and movement. Core teaching will be delivered collaboratively by tutors from a number of different departments. Through the in-depth study of selected case studies you will begin to appreciate the value in the comparative and interdisciplinary approach allowed by the Liberal Arts programme, and develop some of the key skills in analytical and critical thinking that will be essential to your studies.
Year 2
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This module takes the theme, 'Power, Society and Cultural Practice'', and examines it from a number of multidisciplinary and multimedia perspectives. It is designed to build on the first year module for Liberal Arts ('Cultural Encounters'). It encourages students to refine the approaches developed in that module, and to develop further their critical and creative approaches and practices in a comparative manner. The module places a particular emphasis on cultural practices across a range of media and will enable students to perceive the connections between ostensibly disparate forms of communication and discourses.
Year 3
- All modules are optional
Optional Modules
For more information on optional modules, please see the list here.
Teaching & assessment
In your Foundation Year, teaching methods include a mixture of lectures, seminars, workshops, individual tutorials, and supervisory sessions. Outside of the classroom you’ll undertake guided independent reading and study. You will also be assigned a Personal Tutor, who’ll be with you for the duration of your degree, and will have regular scheduled sessions to support learning and the development of study skills. Assessments are varied; quizzes, short written exercises, essays, examinations, poster preparation and presentation, blog/vlogs, short digital films, dissertations and personal development plans. In addition the Foundation Year offers a full range of skills-based training and also the opportunity to take a micro-placement to enhance your employability.
Once you progress onto your full degree course:
- The course has a modular structure. You will take 120 credits’ worth of modules each year.
- You will take the equivalent of four units each year. These will be drawn from a variety of departments, and so the teaching and assessment methods will vary widely, depending upon your own choices.
- In most cases, you will be taught by a mixture of lectures, seminars, and small group tutorials.
- In all these cases, your learning will be informed by your own independent research.
- You will also have access to your instructors for more specific advice about courses.
- Assessment methods will include essays, reports, oral presentations, texts, projects, and examinations.
- You will also take a study skills module during your first year, designed to equip you with and enhance the writing skills you will need to be successful in your degree. This module does not count towards your final degree award but you are required to pass it to progress to your second year.
In your final year, you will write a dissertation, a long essay based on your own, independent research, which will be up to 8,000 words in length.
Entry requirements
A Levels: CCC
Required subjects:
- At least five GCSEs at grade A*-C or 9-4 including English and Mathematics.
T-levels
We accept T-levels for admission to our undergraduate courses, with the following grades regarded as equivalent to our standard A-level requirements:
- AAA* – Distinction (A* on the core and distinction in the occupational specialism)
- AAA – Distinction
- BBB – Merit
- CCC – Pass (C or above on the core)
- DDD – Pass (D or E on the core)
Where a course specifies subject-specific requirements at A-level, T-level applicants are likely to be asked to offer this A-level alongside their T-level studies.
Other UK and Ireland Qualifications
EU requirements
English language requirements
All teaching at Royal Holloway (apart from some language courses) is in English. You will therefore need to have good enough written and spoken English to cope with your studies right from the start.
The scores we require
- IELTS: 6.5 overall. Writing 7.0. No other subscore lower than 5.5.
- Pearson Test of English: 61 overall. Writing 69. No other subscore lower than 51.
- Trinity College London Integrated Skills in English (ISE): ISE III.
- Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE) grade C.
Your future career
Employers increasingly seek to recruit people who are able to respond quickly and effectively to shifting business needs and market conditions, an ability that studying Liberal Arts can give you. Studying a wide range of areas at a high level demonstrates that you can be adaptable and flexible, in addition to equipping you with the creative, critical and analytical skills you would expect to gain from studying at a world-class university. You will develop an invaluable set of transferable skills, expert knowledge in a diverse range of fields, a broad contextual and international awareness, an understanding of the methods available both for tackling challenges in the workplace and communicating with different people in different ways.
On graduation you will be ready to pursue a career in a wide range if areas. Our award-winning careers service is there to guide you along the way so that you can identify the career path that will match your specific strengths and interests. Our careers advisors will also provide you with tailored support to achieve your goals.
Fees, funding & scholarships
Home (UK) students tuition fee per year*: £9,250
Eligible EU students tuition fee per year**: £25,900
Foundation year essential costs***: There are no single associated costs greater than £50 per item on this course.
How do I pay for it? Find out more about funding options, including loans, scholarships and bursaries. UK students who have already taken out a tuition fee loan for undergraduate study should check their eligibility for additional funding directly with the relevant awards body.
*The tuition fee for UK undergraduates is controlled by Government regulations. The fee for Integrated Foundation Year courses starting in September 2025 in the academic year 2025/26 will be £9,250 for that year. The fee for UK students in 2026/27 and beyond has not yet been set.
**This figure is the fee for EU students starting a degree in the academic year 2025/26.
Royal Holloway reserves the right to increase tuition fees annually for overseas fee-paying students. The increase for continuing students who start their degree in 2025/26 will be 5%. For further information see fees and funding and the terms and conditions.
*** These estimated costs relate to studying this particular degree at Royal Holloway during the 2025/26 academic year and are included as a guide. Costs, such as accommodation, food, books and other learning materials and printing, have not been included.
