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Thank you for considering an application
To apply you’ll need to:
- Make note of the Queen Mary institution code: Q50
- Make note of your chosen course UCAS code:
Liberal Arts
- V901 — BA (Hons)
- V904 — BA (Hons) with Foundation
- V902 — BA (Hons) with Year Abroad
- V905 — BA (Hons) with Year Abroad with Foundation
- V903 — BA (Hons) with Year in Industry
- V906 — BA (Hons) with Year in Industry with Foundation
- Click on the link below:
Have further questions? How to apply | Entry requirements
Liberal Arts BA
6 study options
Liberal Arts BA (Hons)
Key information
- Degree
- BA (Hons)
- Duration
- 3 years
- Start
- September 2026
- UCAS code
- V901
- Institution code
- Q50
- Typical A-Level offer
- Grades BBB at A-Level.
Full entry requirements (including contextual admissions) - Home fees
- £9790
- Overseas fees
- £26950
Funding information
Paying your fees
Liberal Arts with Foundation BA (Hons)
Key information
- Degree
- BA (Hons)
- Duration
- 4 years
- Start
- September 2026
- UCAS code
- V904
- Institution code
- Q50
- Entry Requirements
- Full entry requirements (including contextual admissions)
- Home fees
- £9790
- Overseas fees
- £26950
Funding information
Paying your fees
Liberal Arts with Year Abroad BA (Hons)
Key information
- Degree
- BA (Hons)
- Duration
- 4 years
- Start
- September 2026
- UCAS code
- V902
- Institution code
- Q50
- Typical A-Level offer
- Grades BBB at A-Level.
Full entry requirements (including contextual admissions) - Home fees
- £9790
- Overseas fees
- £26950
Funding information
Paying your fees
Liberal Arts with Year Abroad with Foundation BA (Hons)
Key information
- Degree
- BA (Hons)
- Duration
- 5 years
- Start
- September 2026
- UCAS code
- V905
- Institution code
- Q50
- Entry Requirements
- Full entry requirements (including contextual admissions)
- Home fees
- £9790
- Overseas fees
- £26950
Funding information
Paying your fees
Liberal Arts with Year in Industry BA (Hons)
Key information
- Degree
- BA (Hons)
- Duration
- 4 years
- Start
- September 2026
- UCAS code
- V903
- Institution code
- Q50
- Typical A-Level offer
- Grades BBB at A-Level.
Full entry requirements (including contextual admissions) - Home fees
- £9790
- Overseas fees
- £26950
Funding information
Paying your fees
Liberal Arts with Year in Industry with Foundation BA (Hons)
Key information
- Degree
- BA (Hons)
- Duration
- 5 years
- Start
- September 2026
- UCAS code
- V906
- Institution code
- Q50
- Entry Requirements
- Full entry requirements (including contextual admissions)
- Home fees
- £9790
- Overseas fees
- £26950
Funding information
Paying your fees
Overview
Design your own degree and throw open your career options on this exciting programme. Where will your curiosity take you?
Have a variety of interests? Prefer to grow your knowledge across a range of subjects, rather than just one? Liberal Arts is the idea of having a well-rounded education that cultivates the mind. With the flexibility to follow your intellectual curiosity throughout this programme, you’ll be able to explore the subjects you’re passionate about.
Combine modules that reflect your individual interests and aspirations. Alongside learning a language during your first year, you can choose to study film, literature, history, politics, drama, international relations and much more. Taught by academics across multiple subjects, you’ll benefit from their world-leading research and outstanding contributions across environmental, political, and linguistic projects.
Structure
The programme is organised around Liberal Arts compulsory modules and seminars in the first and second years, and culminates in a unique research project drawing on expert supervision.
Year 1
Core and compulsory
Guided elective
- Brief Encounters: Around The World In Short Stories
- Understanding Global Cultures: Exploring the Big Questions
- Literatures in Time: Epic and Romance in the Middle Ages
- Cities and Regions in Transition
- Planetary Emergencies: from analysis to action
- Critical Geography: Environment and Society
- The Foundations of Modern Thought: Introduction to Intellectual History
- Screening History: Representing the Past in the Contemporary Historical Film
- Controversies of Science and Technology in the Making of the Modern World
- Sociolinguistics: English in Use
- Background to British Politics
- Global Histories
- Men, Women, and Song: Love Poetry in the Middle Ages
Please note that all modules are subject to change.
Year 2
Core and compulsory
- Thinking, Writing and Research Across Disciplines
- Digital Culture and Society
- Cultural Encounters in Theory and Practice
Guided elective
- Chinese II Intensive
- Literature and Philosophy
- Madness, Past and Present
- European Tragedy
- To Be Continued: Adaptations of Global Literary Classics
- Adventures in World Literature
- Literatures of the Postcolonial World
- Culture, Power and Performance
- Art and the Climate Crisis
- Economics of Social Issues
- Introduction to Banking
- Victorian Fictions
- Romantics and Revolutionaries
- Representing London: Writing the Eighteenth Century City
- Global Shakespeare
- Reading the Present
- Modern/Postmodern Cinema
- Cinema and Disability
- Contemporary World Cinemas
- Film Futures: Professional Development
- Screening Memory: Cinematic Witnessing, Trauma and Traces of Violence.
- French II
- French II Intensive
- Cultural Geographies
- Society and Space
- Economic Geographies
- Health, Space and Justice
- Colonial Lives and Afterlives
- Development Geographies: From International to Global Perspectives
- German II
- German II Intensive
- Spanish II
- Spanish II Intensive
- Spanish II N
- Women and Gender in Medieval Islam
- The Black Death: A Global History of Catastrophe and Transformation
- Medieval London: Pubs, Plague-pits and Cathedrals
- London on Film: Representing the City in American and British Cinema
- A History of the Internet
- Crime and Punishment in London
- History of English
- Applying Linguistics in the Real World
- Qualitative Data: Interaction and Discourse
- British Politics
- Modernity: Theories of the State, Economy and Society
- Colonialism, Capitalism and Development
- War in World Politics
- The International Politics of the Developing World
- The International Politics of Security
- Gender and Feminisms in World Politics
- Portuguese II Intensive
- Portuguese II
- Russian II
- Russian II N
- Russian II Intensive
- Features of English: Linguistics for English Language Teaching
- Cultures of Migration and Diaspora
- Life Under Construction: Artistic Responses to War and Revolution
- Postsocialist intimacies: Gender and sexual politics in contemporary China
Please note that all modules are subject to change.
Year 3
Core and compulsory
Guided elective
- Chinese III
- Spanish Graphic Novels in the 21st Century
- Global Medical Humanities: the Human in Medicine
- Medicine and Ethics in Contemporary Global Literature
- Schools for Scandal: Sexual Fictions from The School of Venus to 50 Shades of Grey
- Culture, Performance and Globalisation
- Offstage London
- Writing about the Arts
- Laughing Matters: Comedy and Contemporary Culture
- Cultures of Inequality: Narrating Class 1815-1914
- Creative Writing Prose Fiction
- Jane Austen: Regency Novelist
- Criticism and Code: Digital Practices for English Studies
- Creative Producing
- Film Philosophy
- Montage Across the Arts: Aesthetics, Modernity, Politics
- Contemporary German Cinema and Digital Visual Culture in a Global Context
- French III
- Geography, Technology and Society
- The Public Life of Cities
- Critical Environmental Studies
- Epidemic Cities
- German III
- Avant-Garde Theatre in Europe
- Spanish III
- Art and Power in Early Modern Europe
- Cold War America 1945-1975
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Africa, Europe, and the Americas from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries
- Saving the World? A Global History of Humanitarianism in the Long Twentieth Century
- Counterrevolutions: Mass Politics and the Birth of the Modern Right, 1790-1870
- Impacts of Empire: Global Connections that have Shaped Modern British History
- Language and Health Communication
- Multimodality, media and language
- Civil Society: Democracy, Activism and Social Change
- Migration and the Politics of Belonging
- Racism and Anti-Racism in World Politics
- More than Human Politics
- Global Ethics
- Portuguese III
- Russian III
- Russian III N
- Afropean Identities
- Culture, Labour and Activism in Latin America
- Shaping Identities: Language in the French-Speaking World
Please note that all modules are subject to change.
The full programme details and description are available in our Programme and Module Directory
Study options
Apply for this degree with any of the following options. Take care to use the correct UCAS code - it may not be possible to change your selection later.
Integrated foundation year
International students can apply for our Liberal Arts BA with an Integrated Foundation Year. The foundation year, taught on campus by Queen Mary lecturers, prepares you for the rest of the programme and can be started in either September or January.
Year in industry
This degree can be taken with an optional industrial experience year, and owing to the range of subjects offered by a Liberal Arts programme, it is possible to pursue work placements across a variety of industries. This is taken in your third year of studies. Recent students have worked with companies such as:
- Greencore
- Max Mara
Please note that industrial placements are highly competitive across the UK; Queen Mary students are supported with job hunting, applications, practice interviews and assessment centre preparation. Your academic track record is also factored in. If you are not successful in securing a placement, your third year will be spent at Queen Mary completing your studies.
Year abroad
You have three options for how to spend your year abroad:
- attending university
- on a work placement with our support, or independently with our approval
- teaching English as a foreign language assistant.
To find out more about the Year Abroad, please visit our website.
Teaching
Teaching and learning
Teaching takes a number of forms, which may include:
- Lectures
- Seminars
- Small group tutorials
- Workshops
- Lab work using multi-media resources
- Writing intensive courses
- Field trips
- Independent work by students, including research, presentations and peer review; Individual supervision of projects and dissertations
- Individual and group feedback on written work and other completed tasks.
Assessment
Assessment is varied and will take a number of forms within the programme, typically a combination of written exams and coursework, final-year dissertations, and independent projects.
Resources and facilities
The Schools offer excellent on-campus resources to aid your studies, including:
- the Queen Mary library
- the Multimedia Language Resource Centre, equipped with digital labs and resource rooms, teacher and student workstations, interactive whiteboards, and software for viewing live international satellite TV broadcasts
- subscriptions to foreign newspapers and journals
- language clubs and social activities, including film screenings, discussion groups and debates
- the Centre for European Research, which welcomes students and academics interested in learning and researching on all matters relating to Europe
- the Mile End Institute, a major policy centre that specialises in contemporary British politics, featuring regular high-profile speakers.
Entry requirements
| A-Level | Grades BBB at A-Level. |
| IB | International Baccalaureate Diploma with a minimum of 30 points overall, including 5,5,5 from three Higher Level subjects. |
| BTEC | BTEC qualifications are considered for entry to this programme.\n |
| Access HE | We consider applications from students with the Access to Higher Education Diploma. The minimum academic requirement is to achieve 60 credits overall, with 45 credits at Level 3, of which 15 credits must be at Distinction and 15 credits at Merit or higher. For all other single and joint honours language programmes, experience of learning a language other than your mother tongue, and a demonstrable aptitude for language study are required. Applications are considered on a case by case basis, and we may request an interview. Due to the high volume of applications, we do not make offers of study purely on the basis of meeting grade requirements. |
| GCSE | Minimum five GCSE passes including English at grade C or 4. |
| EPQ | Alternative offers may be made to applicants taking the Extended Project Qualification. \nFor further information please visit: qmul.ac.uk/undergraduate/entry/epq |
| Contextualised admissions | Our standard contextual offer: BCC at A-Level. \n\nOur enhanced contextual offer: CCC at A-Level. \n\nMore information on our contextual offer criteria can be found on our contextualised admissions page. \n\nPlease note that General Studies and Critical Thinking are excluded from any A-Level offer and cannot be considered. |
| A-Level | Grades BBB at A-Level. |
| IB | International Baccalaureate Diploma with a minimum of 30 points overall, including 5,5,5 from three Higher Level subjects. |
| BTEC | BTEC qualifications are considered for entry to this programme. |
| Access HE | We consider applications from students with the Access to Higher Education Diploma. The minimum academic requirement is to achieve 60 credits overall, with 45 credits at Level 3, of which 15 credits must be at Distinction and 15 credits at Merit or higher. For all other single and joint honours language programmes, experience of learning a language other than your mother tongue, and a demonstrable aptitude for language study are required. Applications are considered on a case by case basis, and we may request an interview. Due to the high volume of applications, we do not make offers of study purely on the basis of meeting grade requirements. |
| GCSE | Minimum five GCSE passes including English at grade C or 4. |
| EPQ | Alternative offers may be made to applicants taking the Extended Project Qualification. For further information please visit: qmul.ac.uk/undergraduate/entry/epq |
| Contextualised admissions | Our standard contextual offer: BCC at A-Level. Our enhanced contextual offer: CCC at A-Level. More information on our contextual offer criteria can be found on our contextualised admissions page. Please note that General Studies and Critical Thinking are excluded from any A-Level offer and cannot be considered. |
| A-Level | Grades BBB at A-Level. |
| IB | International Baccalaureate Diploma with a minimum of 30 points overall, including 5,5,5 from three Higher Level subjects. |
| BTEC | BTEC qualifications are considered for entry to this programme. |
| Access HE | We consider applications from students with the Access to Higher Education Diploma. The minimum academic requirement is to achieve 60 credits overall, with 45 credits at Level 3, of which 15 credits must be at Distinction and 15 credits at Merit or higher. For all other single and joint honours language programmes, experience of learning a language other than your mother tongue, and a demonstrable aptitude for language study are required. Applications are considered on a case by case basis, and we may request an interview. Due to the high volume of applications, we do not make offers of study purely on the basis of meeting grade requirements. |
| GCSE | Minimum five GCSE passes including English at grade C or 4. |
| EPQ | Alternative offers may be made to applicants taking the Extended Project Qualification. For further information please visit: qmul.ac.uk/undergraduate/entry/epq |
| Contextualised admissions | Our standard contextual offer: BCC at A-Level. Our enhanced contextual offer: CCC at A-Level. More information on our contextual offer criteria can be found on our contextualised admissions page. Please note that General Studies and Critical Thinking are excluded from any A-Level offer and cannot be considered. |
Non-UK students
We accept a wide range of European and international qualifications in addition to A-levels, the International Baccalaureate and BTEC qualifications. Please visit International Admissions for full details.
If your qualifications are not accepted for direct entry onto this degree, consider applying for a foundation programme.
English language
Find out more about our English language entry requirements, including the types of test we accept and the scores needed for entry to the programme.
You may also be able to meet the English language requirement for your programme by joining a summer pre-sessional programme before starting your degree.
Further information
Funding
Loans and grants
UK students accepted onto this course are eligible to apply for tuition fee and maintenance loans from Student Finance England or other government bodies.
Scholarships and bursaries
Queen Mary offers a generous package of scholarships and bursaries, which currently benefits around 50 per cent of our undergraduates.
Scholarships are available for home, EU and international students. Specific funding is also available for students from the local area. International students may be eligible for a fee reduction. We offer means-tested funding, as well as subject-specific funding for many degrees.
Find out what scholarships and bursaries are available to you.
Support from Queen Mary
We offer specialist support on all financial and welfare issues through our Advice and Counselling Service, which you can access as soon as you have applied for a place at Queen Mary.
Take a look at our Student Advice Guides which cover ways to finance your degree, including:
- additional sources of funding
- planning your budget and cutting costs
- part-time and vacation work
- money for lone parents.
Careers
Graduates from Queen Mary's School and the wider Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences go on to work in a wide variety of careers. Some apply their degree knowledge directly, entering careers such as education and the arts, whilst others transfer skills gained during study into areas such as public relations. Graduates who have developed specialisations in the wider Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences often find employment in areas such as business, finance, government and the media.
Whichever of these area specialisations you may have chosen, you will develop a wide range of skills and you will cover a wider range of topics and approaches than in a typical single or joint honours degree.
As a student on the BA Liberal Arts programme, you will also improve your abilities to analyse material, present arguments underpinned by evidence, evaluate different views and approaches to a subject, and express yourself effectively both orally and in writing.
Career support
You’ll have access to bespoke careers support every step of your degree, including personal academic support from the French and Politics departments. You’ll benefit from regular careers events for language students, including a workshop for students returning from their year abroad, and a Make Languages Work For You speedmeet with alumni.
Our careers team can also offer:
- specialist advice on choosing a career path
- support with finding work experience, internships and graduate jobs
- feedback on CVs, cover letters and application forms
- interview coaching.
Learn more about career support and development at Queen Mary.
Data for these courses
Liberal Arts - BA (Hons)
The Discover Uni dataset (formerly Unistats)
About the School
The School of the Arts combines innovation, discovery and excellence in education and research in Drama, Film, Modern Languages, English & Comparative Literature, Creative Writing, Linguistics and Liberal Arts. We rank in the top 100 worldwide for Arts and Humanities (QS World University Rankings by Subject 2024)
With our commitment to social justice, inclusivity and social mobility, our collaborations with external organisations, prominent writers and performers, and our facilities that support both academic and practice-based learning, an education in the School of the Arts equips our students with critical thinking and practical skills, unleashes their imagination and enables them to reach the levels of excellence needed in today’s industries.
We regularly host prominent writers and performers and collaborate with leading organisations such as the V&A, the Barbican, the Live Art Development Agency and Shakespeare’s Globe.
We are renowned for the depth and impact of research - which leads our teaching. We rank 1st for drama and in the top 10 for film in the UK for the quality of our research (REF2021). Our multilingual community brings together brilliant minds from across the world to share a wealth of expertise combining research excellence with an unrivalled commitment to social justice and social mobility.
