Career guides: Humanities

Humanities in the UK

• The huge number of art galleries, libraries, museums and other cultural institutions in the UK is a huge benefit to humanities students. 
• The UK government supports the arts and humanities through the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Each year it offers about 700 new research awards and 1,500 postgraduate awards worth more than £60 million, in subjects including literature, languages, archaeology and philosophy. 
• The UK is a world leader in digital research collections and students can access these huge online archives for free. 

Globally recognised universities

• UK universities have an excellent global reputation for their Humanities programmes and the UK has a strong heritage in the subject area. 
• Five UK universities currently feature in the top 20 global rankings for arts and humanities (THE World University rankings 2024). They are the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, UCL, University of Edinburgh and King's College London.
• Many UK universities boast world-class libraries on their own campuses.