Human Sciences

Human sciences is an unusually ambitious and genuinely interdisciplinary degree, bringing together the biological and social scientific study of human beings in a single programme. It asks what makes us human, what explains human diversity across populations, cultures, and history, and how biological and social factors interact to produce the individuals and societies we see. Drawing on evolutionary biology, genetics, demography, anthropology, psychology, and the social sciences, it approaches the human animal as simultaneously a biological organism shaped by evolution and a cultural being whose nature is realised through social life.

At the University of Oxford, human sciences has a long and distinctive history, and the degree reflects Oxford's capacity to bring together exceptional scholars from across different departments in the service of a common intellectual project. You will study human evolution and the fossil record, population genetics, behavioural ecology, physical anthropology, cognitive and social psychology, comparative religion, and demography, among other areas, developing the ability to synthesise knowledge from very different disciplines and to evaluate evidence from multiple kinds of inquiry. Oxford's tutorial system means you receive intensive one-to-one and small group teaching from leading researchers in each area you study, which gives you deep engagement with the intellectual substance of the subjects rather than a superficial survey.

The degree is explicitly designed to resist the specialisation that characterises most academic disciplines, and students who thrive are those who are genuinely interested in the full range of questions the subject raises rather than in any single component.

Graduates of human sciences go on to careers in medicine, research science, public health, international development, journalism, policy, consulting, finance, and education, among many others. The analytical flexibility the degree develops, combined with the prestige of an Oxford degree, means graduates are found in essentially every sector. Postgraduate study in medicine, public health, evolutionary biology, anthropology, or social science is a common next step.