Human, Social, and Political Sciences

Human, Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge is an unusually ambitious degree precisely because it refuses to treat social, political and human questions as belonging to separate intellectual boxes. In the modern world, the forces that shape societies, states and individuals are interconnected in ways that disciplinary boundaries can obscure. This programme brings together social anthropology, politics, sociology, psychology and related fields to give you a genuinely integrated understanding of human behaviour, social organisation and political life.

Studying at Cambridge means working within a collegiate system where supervisions, small-group teaching, seminars and lectures combine to create an intense intellectual environment. You will develop exceptional skills in reading, argument and writing, learning to engage with theoretical frameworks from across the social sciences and to apply them to empirical questions about real societies and political systems. The programme asks you to move between abstract argument and close attention to evidence, and to develop an awareness of how method shapes what you can know.

This breadth of training makes graduates from this degree competitive across a wide range of careers. Politics, international relations, journalism, public policy, civil service, the law, business, development work and academia are all destinations that draw on the analytical and communication skills the programme develops. Many graduates go on to postgraduate study in political science, sociology, anthropology, international relations or development studies, building specialist expertise on the foundations of a broad social scientific education.

The combination of rigorous thinking and genuine curiosity about human life that the degree cultivates is an asset in almost any intellectual or professional field.