BA Liberal Arts

About this course

BA in Liberal Arts, combining arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences. Core topics include Historical Research, Research Methods, Social & Cultural Analysis, Global & Comparative Perspective, and Communication & Writing. Optional modules span media arts, creative writing, film, literature, law, international relations and psychology. Students may incorporate a year abroad, foundation year, or language year into the programme.

Written by AI from the university's course page and module list. It can get details wrong, so check the official course page before you rely on it.

Institution: Royal Holloway, University of London
Level: undergraduate
Subject: Liberal Arts
Duration: 3 years
UCAS code: Y000
Typical offer: A-level BBB, IB 30

Entry requirements

A level: BBB-BBC (Required subjects: We require English and Mathematics GCSE at grade 4/C) IB: 5,5,5 at Higher Level OR a minimum of 30 points overall

What students say

Based on about 12 final-year students who answered (a small group: a rough guide only)

Teaching on my course: 94%
Learning opportunities: 93%
Assessment and feedback: 90%
Academic support: 95%
Organisation and management: 83%
Learning resources: 92%
Student voice: 78%

Do students stay on the course?

Based on about 20 students who started (a small group: a rough guide only)

Continued on course: 65%
Left higher education: 30%
Moved to a lower qualification: 5%

Who gets in

Based on about 15 students who started (a small group: a rough guide only)

A levels: 95%
Baccalaureate: 5%

Accreditation & quality ratings

TEF 2023 (whole university): Silver overall, Silver for student experience, Silver for student outcomes.

Modules

Critical and Cultural Encounters
French Ab Initio Written I
French Ab Initio Oral I
French Advanced Written I
French Advanced Oral I
German Ab Initio Written I
German Ab Initio Oral I
German Advanced Written I
German Advanced Oral I
Italian Ab Initio Written I
Italian Ab Initio Oral I
Italian Advanced Written I
Italian Advanced Oral I
Spanish Ab Initio Written I
Spanish Ab Initio Oral I
Spanish Advanced Written I
Spanish Advanced Oral I
Reading Texts
Introduction to Greek Literature
Roman Literature of the Empire
Greek History and the City State
Key Themes in Roman History
Introduction to Greek Archaeology
Introduction to Roman Archaeology
Beginner’s Greek
Intermediate Greek
Beginner's Latin
Intermediate Latin
Greek Language and Reading
Latin Language and Reading
Introduction to Criminology
Theatre and Text 1
Theatre and Culture 1
Theatre and Ideas 1
Principles of Economics
Encountering Medieval Literature: From Beowulf to Chaucer
Critical Foundations: Thinking As A Critic
Shakespeare
Reorienting the Novel
Introduction to Poetry
Republics, Kings and People: The Foundations of European Political Thought from Plato to Rousseau
From Renaissance to Revolutions: Europe and the World, 1500-1800
Conflict and Identity in Modern Europe, c. 1770 to 2000
From Mao to Bin Laden: Twentieth-Century Leaders in the Non-Western World
Rome to Renaissance: An Introduction to the Middle Ages
Introduction to Media Histories 1
Reading Texts: Criticism for Comparative Literature
Screen Narrative: Theory and Practice
Skills and Techniques for Translation
The Visual Image in French Culture and Society
Key French Texts: The Individual and Society
Decoding France: Language, Culture, Identity
Introduction to German Studies
Strange Encounters: Texts and Contexts in Modern German Culture
Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and their Heritage
Fascist Italy
Journeys of Identity Discovery, Subversion and Destruction in the Hispanic Worlds
International Film 1: Contexts and Practices
Tales of the City: Introduction to Thematic Analysis
The Birth of Film
Visual Arts 1: Artists and their Materials
Introduction to Pure Mathematics
Linear Algebra I
From Euclid to Mandelbrot
Calculus
Numbers and Functions
Introduction to Applied Mathematics
Statistical Methods 1
Calculus II
Introduction to World Music
Contemporary Debates in Music
A Very Short History of Music
Introduction to Historical Musicology
Introduction to Ancient Philosophy
Classic and Contemporary Readings in Politics and International Relations
Understanding Development across the Lifespan
Understanding Mental Health and Wellbeing
Power, Society and Cultural Practice
Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy
The British and the World: 1763-1900
The Decline and Fall of Britain’s Global Empire, 1899-1997
The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic
Rome and its Empire from Augustus to Commodus
Centre of the Universe: Science from Antiquity to the early Middle Ages
The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1000-1250
Religion, Culture and Society in Europe, 1000-1250
Virtue and Power: Political Thought from Cicero to Machiavelli
The Birth of Europe, 400-900
The Dark Continent: Europe, 1914-1948
Safe European Home? Europe 1945-2000
Byzantine Twilight, 1200-1460
The Tudor Monarchy 1485-1603
Killing the King: England in an Age of Revolution, 1603-1714
Gorgeous Georgians?: Society, Culture and Crime, 1714-1830
The Ottomans: The Muslim Empire in the Early Modern World, 1453-1789
The Greek World from the Fall of Byzantium to the Rise of Nationalism, 1453-1910
Medicine from Antiquity to the Medieval Near East
The Light of Burning Heretics: Popular Heresy in the Middle Ages
Spanish and Portuguese Empires in the Americas, 1450-1650
Italy from Unification to the Present
Apocalypse Postponed: The Global Cold War 1945-98
From Venizelos to Varoufakis: The History of Greece from 1910 to the Present Day
American Economic Hegemony: Its Rise and Fall, 1941-2012
Vice, Virtue and the Victorians: British History 1837-1901
Modern British History 1914-1973
The United States in the Twentieth Century
Spain 1898-1939
Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy 1939-1989
Awakening China: From the Opium Wars to the Present Day
The Holy Man: Sanctity and the Sacred in Historical Research
Film Theory: Hitchcock and Point of View
Modernism and Avant Garde Film
Modern European Cinema
Television Histories
Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference
Digital Aesthetics
Contemporary Chinese Cinemas
The Creative Industries
Studies in Ethnomusicology
Studies in Music, Media and Technology
Introduction to Jazz: Theory, Practice and Contexts
Practical Ethics
Democracy in Britain
Contemporary Political Theory
International Political Economy
Political Behaviour
War and Security in World Politics
Modern Political Thought
International Organisations
The Politics of Human Rights
Introduction to Political Communication
Introduction to European Philosophy 1: Kant to Hegel
Mind and World
Introduction to European Philosophy 2: The Critique of Idealism
Modern French Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Major Thinker
Microeconomics
Political Geography
Cities: Economies and Ecologies
Cultural Geographies of the Modern World
Perspectives on Development
Key Perspectives and Debates in Criminology
Sociology of Contemporary Society
Linear Algebra II
Ring Theory
Graphs and Optimisation
Ordinary Differential Equations and Fourier Analysis
Complex Analysis
Probability Theory
Vector Calculus
Virgil’s Aeneid: The Empire in the Literary Imagination
Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Art and Power in Augustan Rome
Greek Law and Lawcourts
Greek History to 322 BC
Greek Drama (In Translation)
Gender in Classical Antiquity
Aspects of Modern Greek Language and Culture
Theatre and Text: Staging the Real
Theatre and Text: Greek Tragedy
Theatre and Text: Decoding debbie tucker green
Theatre and Text: Dramaturgy
Theatre and Culture: Southeast Asian Theatre and Performance
Theatre and Culture: Theatre for Young Audiences
Theatre and Culture: Aesthetics of Anxiety
Theatre and Culture: Cultures of Memory
Dancing Bodies, Global Culture
Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Live Art
Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Acting
Theatre and Ideas: Ideas of Race and Indigeneity
Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Money
Theatre and Ideas: Arts Entrepreneurship
Theatre and Ideas: Ideas of Gender and Sexuality
Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Time
Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Knowledge and the Body
Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Tragedy
Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Casting
Theatre and Ideas: The Idea of Adaptation
Renaissance Literature
The Age of Opposition: Literature, 1660-1780
Victorian Literature
Romanticisms
Contemporary Debates in Literary and Critical Theory
Modernisms
Middle English Poetry
Medieval Dream and Vision
Strange Fictions: Romance in the Middle Ages
Intensive Shakespeare: Comedy, History, Tragedy
Drama and Witchcraft
Paradise in Early Modern Literature
Early Modern Bodies
Fictions of Sensation
Creative Writing: Structure and Style
Literature of the Fin de Siècle, 1883-1903
Dark Reform: Scandal and Satire in American Culture
Four National Poets: Gillian Clarke, Carol Ann Duffy, Liz Lochhead and Paula Meehan
French Language II
Intensive French for Beginners II
Writing Romance and Desire
Cinema in France
German Language II
Intensive Beginners’ German II
Death, Desire, Decline: Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka
21st-century World Food Fictions: Feeding Interdisciplinary Understandings of Identity Constructs
World Literatures: Texts and Identities in Motion
Belonging and the Self in Contemporary German Fiction and Film
Advanced Italian II for Post Beginners
Italian Language II
Postwar Italian Cinema: the Auteur Tradition
Art and Literature in Renaissance Florence
Fake News, Gossip, and the Pursuit of Truth: From Renaissance Newsletters to Online Journalism
Spanish Language II
Intensive Spanish II
Deceit, Desire and the Self: Literature of the Spanish Golden Age
Seducing the Nation: Spanish Film 1940s to 1980s
Conflict in Latin American Literature
A Special Theme in the Novel: Transgressions
Social Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Voluntary Work in the Community
LAXXX Individual Interdisciplinary Project
Further Aspects of Modern Greek Language and Culture
Sociology of Health and Illness
Youth in Society: Deviance and Delinquency
Lost in Music: The Sociology of Popular Music
Sociology of Health and Illness 2
Youth in Society: Culture, Subculture & Transgression
Race, Ethnicity and Migration
Children, Society and Risk
Terrorism Studies Part 1
Drugs, Crime and Society
Sentencing and Penal Policy
Interpersonal violence and harm
Crime, Media and Culture
Terrorism Studies Part 2
Prisons
Victims and Witnesses
The Actor's Voice
Performing Celebrity: The Early Actress
Creative Learning and Theatre
Theatre & Therapy
Shakespeare on Camera
Physical Theatre
Contemporary British Theatre
Naturalist Theatre in Context
Asylum Seekers in the 21st Century: Theatre, Film and Activism
Dancing in the Street
Race Relations in Theatre, Film and Television
Performance and Visual Art
Theatre, Magic and Witchcraft
Macroeconomics
The Girl in the Book
The Post-Colonial Novel
Poetic Practice
Special Author: Chaucer
Special Author: Charles Dickens
Advanced Shakespeare: The Problem Plays
Literature and Philosophy
Old English Riddles
Reading the Waste Land
Children's Literature
Coast and Estuarine Management
Global Warming
Wetland Environments: Process and Policy
Managing River Environments
Digital Landscapes
Arid Africa
Glacial Environments
Mammals in a Changing World
Volcanoes
Regeneration and Urban Policy
Geography of Commodities
Post-Capitalist Cities
Geopolitics of Media and Communications
Exploration, Science and Making of Geography
Geography, Museums and Collections
Creative Geographies
Geographies of Home
Mobilities
Challenging Development? Disasters, Conflict and Human (in)Security
Critical GIS
Pratique du Français III
Arthurian Romance: Chretien de Troyes
Text and Image in France: from Cubism to the Present
Blindness and Vision in French Culture
Redefining the Erotic in Contemporary French Literature and Film
Villains and Villainy in Early Modern French Theatre
German Language III
Narrative and Identity: The German Novel from the 18th to the 21st Century
National Socialism and the Third Reich in German Film and Visual Culture from 1933 to the Present
Advanced Italian III
Spanish III
Transnationalism, Diaspora and Globalisation in Contemporary Film
Humans and Other Animals in Twenty-First Century Fiction and Thought
Number Theory
Error Correcting Codes
Contemporary British Cinema
Television and Digital Cultures
Media Technologies
Film, Television and the Holocaust
Psychoanalysis and Cinema
See This Sound - Audiovisuology
Political Cinema: From Eisenstein to Youtube
The Poetics of Contemporary Television
360º Cinema
Contemporary British Cinema 2
Film Aesthetics 1: Issues of Interpretation and Evaluation
Film Aesthetics 2: The World and Its Image
Modern European Philosophy 1: Husserl to Heidegger
Modern European Philosophy 2: Critical Theory and Hermeneutics
Advanced Developmental Psychology
Health Psychology and Wellbeing
Educational Psychology
The British in India: a Social and Political History
The Politics of the Internet and the Information Society
Radical Political Theory I: Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche
The Politics of Toleration
Social Justice: From Theory to Practice
US Foreign Policy - History
Advanced Seminar in British Politics
The Politics of Africa
Defence in the Post-Cold War World
Understanding China's Rise: Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy
Global Energy Policy
Refugees and Migration in World Politics
American Political Development
The Politics of Russia and Eastern Europe
Theories of Freedom and Democracy
Directing Screen Fiction
Screen Documentary

Questions about this course

Are students happy with the teaching on BA Liberal Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London?

94% of final-year students were positive about the teaching in the National Student Survey 2025-26.

What grades do I need for BA Liberal Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London?

The typical offer is BBB at A level, or 30 points in the IB. The average entrant had 122 UCAS points.

Does BA Liberal Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London include a placement year or year abroad?

The course has an optional placement year and an optional year abroad.

How many students continue on BA Liberal Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London?

65% of students continued into their second year, and 30% left higher education.