King's College London Faculty of Arts and Humanities

Faculty of Arts & Humanities,
King's College London
Former names	King's College, London Faculty of Arts (1831) ; King's College, London Faculties of Music and Theology (1831) ; King's College London School of Humanities (1988) ; King's College London School of Arts and Humanities (2009) ; King's College London Faculty of Arts & Humanities (2014)
Established	1831; 193 years ago
Parent institution	King's College London
Executive Dean of Faculty	Professor Marion Thain
Location	London, United Kingdom
Website	kcl.ac.uk/artshums/

The King's College London Faculty of Arts & Humanities is one of the nine academic Faculties of study of King's College London. It is situated on the Strand in the heart of central London, in the vicinity of many renowned cultural institutions with which the Faculty has close links, including the British Museum, Shakespeare's Globe, the National Portrait Gallery and the British Library.^[1] In the 2024 Times Higher Education World University Rankings by subject, King's Arts & Humanities ranked in the top twenty worldwide.^[2]

The Faculty of Arts & Humanities offers study at undergraduate and graduate level in a wide range of subject areas. Many of the departments and programmes offer joint undergraduate degrees, including some with the Departments of Geography and War Studies, in the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy, and with Mathematics in the Faculty of Natural & Mathematical Sciences.^[3] As a member of the Russell Group and the Golden triangle, the Faculty receives a high number of applications.

The Faculty is a member of The Council of University Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (DASSH UK), and of London Citizens. The current Executive Dean of Faculty is Professor Simon Tanner, who took over in an interim position from Professor Marion Thain in November 2024.

History

In the late 1980s, King's College London's Faculty of Arts merged with the Faculties of Music and Theology as the School of Humanities and took on the name of the School of Arts & Humanities in 2009. The original Arts departments such as War Studies and Geography formed part of the Faculty known now as Social Science & Public Policy while the Arts & Humanities expanded from its 'classical' humanities roots.^[4] Over the past few years, the Faculty has established interdisciplinary programmes such Liberal Arts and led new developments in teaching and research, for instance through the Department of Digital Humanities, Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries.The School of Arts & Humanities became the Faculty of Arts & Humanities in 2014.

In 2023, the Digital Futures Institute and the Global Cultures Institute were launched as part of a new Faculty vision to showcase how arts and humanities expertise were addressing some of society's most pressing challenges.^[5]

Departments

The following departments and centres can be found in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities:

Classics
Culture, Media & Creative Industries
Digital Humanities
English
Film Studies
History
Languages, Literatures and Cultures
Interdisciplinary Humanities
Music
Philosophy
Theology & Religious Studies

Notable people

Current Professorial staff

Edward Adams, Professor of New Testament Studies
Btihaj Ajana, Professor of Ethics and Digital Culture
Maria Alvarez, Professor of Philosophy
Sarah Atkinson, Professor of Screen Media
Matthew Bell, Professor of German and Comparative Literature
George Benjamin, Henry Purcell Professor of Composition
Chris Berry, Professor of Film Studies
Francisco Bethencourt, Charles Boxer Professor
Clare Birchall, Professor of Contemporary Culture
Jim Bjork, Professor of Modern European History
Federico Bonaddio, Modern Spanish Studies
Fay Bound Alberti, Professor in Modern History
Hugh Bowden, Professor of Ancient History
Catherine Boyle, Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies
Bill Brewer, Susan Stebbing Professor of Philosophy
Helen Brookman, Professor in Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Education
Emily Butterworth, Professor of Early Modern French
Clare Carlisle, Professor of Philosophy
David Carpenter, Professor of Medieval History
Erica Carter, Professor of German and Film
Jinhee Choi, Professor of Film Studies
Roberta Comunian, Professor of Creative Economies
Steven Connor, Professor of Living Well With Technology
Sarah Cooper, Professor of Film Studies
Julia Crick, Professor of Palaeography and Manuscript Studies
Kate Devlin, Professor of Artificial Intelligence & Society
Emma Dillion, Thurston Dart Professor of Music (Medieval Music and Cultures)
Richard Drayton, Rhodes Professor of Imperial History
Stuart Dunn, Professor of Spatial Humanities
David Edgerton (historian), Hans Rausing Professor of the History of Science and Technology
Max Edling, Professor of Early American History
Jane Elliott, Professor of Contemporary Literature, Culture and Theory
Lara Feigel, Professor of Modern Literature and Culture
Patrick ffrench, Professor of French
Rosalind Galt, Professor of Film Studies
Paul Gilroy, Professor of American & English Literature
Kelina Gotman, Professor of Performance and the Humanities
Laura Gowling, Professor of Early Modern History
Toby Green, Professor of Precolonial and Lusophone African History and Culture
Christopher Hamilton, Professor of Philosophy
Nicholas Harrison, Professor of French and Postcolonial Studies
Matthew Head, Professor of Music
Peter Heather, Professor of Medieval History
Christopher Hughes, Professor of Philosophy
Paul Joyce, Samuel Davidson Professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible
Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Professor of English Literature
Richard Kirkland, Professor of Irish Literature & Cultural Theory
Ismene Lada-Richards, Professor of Classical Literature & Performance Culture
Stephen Lovell, Professor of Modern History
Javed Majeed, Professor of English and Comparative Literature
Johanna Malt, Professor of French Literature & Visual Culture
Paul McDonald, Professor of Media Industries
Siobhán McIlvanney, Professor of French and Francophone Women's Writing
Gordon McMullan, Professor of English
Eliot Michaelson, Professor of Philosophy
Lucy Munro, Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature
Ruvani Ranasinha, Professor of Global Literatures
Dominic Rathbone, Professor of Ancient History
Alan Read, Professor of Theatre
Anna Reading, Professor of Culture and Creative Industries
Paul Readman, Professor in Modern British History
Andrea Sangiovanni, Professor of Philosophy
Christina Scharff, Professor of Culture and Subjectivity
Lydia Schumacher, Professor of Historical and Philosophical Theology
Katherine Butler Schofield, Professor of South Asian Music and History
Martin Stokes, King Edward Professor of Music

Former academic staff

Maria Rosa Antognazza, Professor of Philosophy
Arthur Burns, Professor of History
Roderick Beaton, Koraes Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History, Language & Literature
Harrison Birtwistle, British contemporary composer
Averil Cameron, Warden of Keble College, Oxford, Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine History in the University of Oxford, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford
A. G. Dickens (1910-2001), historian, former Director of the Institute of Historical Research
Richard Dyer, Professor of Film Studies
Simon Gaunt, Professor of French Literature
John Eliot Gardiner, English conductor
John Elliott, historian
Edith Hall, Professor of Classics
F. J. C. Hearnshaw (1869-1946), historian
Judith Herrin, Emeritus Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies
Brian Hurwitz, D'Oyly Carte Professor of Medicine & the Arts
Efraim Karsh, Founding Director and Emeritus Professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies
Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate
P. J. Marshall, Emeritus Rhodes Professor of Imperial History, President of the Royal Historical Society from 1997 to 2001
Janet Nelson, Emeritus Professor of Medieval History, President of the Royal Historical Society from 2001 to 2005
Richard Overy, historian
Roger Parker, Thurston Dart Professor of Music
Curtis Price, Warden of New College, Oxford
David Profumo, an English novelist, 6th Baron Profumo
Conrad Russell, 5th Earl Russell (1937-2004), 5th Earl Russell
Richard Sorabji, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy
Susan Stebbing (1885-1943), Lecturer in Philosophy
Joan E. Taylor, Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism
Patrick Wright, Professor of Literature and Visual & Material Culture