Human Sciences

Applying to St Hugh’s for Human Sciences

Human Sciences is an interdisciplinary degree course which enables students to study humans from multiple interconnecting perspectives across the biological and social sciences. Central topics for Human Sciences include human behaviour and its evolution, genetics, population growth and demography, ethnic and cultural diversity, and the ecology and epidemiology of human disease. The attributes tutors are looking for in applicants include:

• keenness
• an ability to understand things in context and make connections
• readiness to modify ideas in the light of evidence
• the capacity to form and express a personal point of view.

Recognizing that Human Sciences is an interdisciplinary course, there are no subject specific entrance requirements. A-levels (or equivalent) in Mathematics and Biology are useful, but students coming to Oxford with a purely arts background have also completed the degree successfully.

If you are invited for interview, tutors will not expect you to have any specific prior knowledge of the subject. You will be asked questions designed to help you demonstrate the above attributes. The interview is aimed primarily at assessing the candidate’s potential for independent thinking, ability to follow an argument, skill in communication and listening. It is not a test of knowledge in isolation from context, or of verbal facility. Interviewers will be looking for evidence of ability to respond in a thoughtful way to unpredictable questions and ideas, intellectual curiosity, openness of mind and independent thinking. They will be looking for enthusiasm for their current studies or activities, but also evidence that the candidate’s interest goes beyond their current academic training, and that they are able to deploy their knowledge in ways that show initiative.

Choosing St Hugh’s for Human Sciences

The Human Sciences course is taught by specialists from across the University. Lectures introduce the material and provide the core concepts and theories for each paper. Tutorials allow students to consider particular topics in greater depth and draw connections across different perspectives and parts of the degree. They also allow students from different academic backgrounds to gain the necessary grounding across a range of competencies.

St Hugh’s is fortunate to have two Tutorial Fellows in Human Sciences, Professor Thomas Cousins, and Professor Thomas Puschel. Thomas cousins is an anthropologist of southern Africa with a particular interest in health, labour, and kinship, especially nutrition and pharmaceuticals and their attendant forms of value and life. Thomas Puschel’s main academic interest relates to the study of how and why human and primate bodies have become the way they currently are. To answer this kind of questions, he applies a combination of statistical modelling, 3D morphometrics, virtual biomechanical techniques, computational simulations, phylogenetic comparative methods, and fieldwork. His research has focused on the morphological innovation along the human lineage, primate phylogenetics and adaptive evolution, palaeontological fieldwork, and the development of new tools to analyse primate form and function in an evolutionary framework.

Studying and Living at St Hugh’s

Throughout the Human Sciences degree, students are encouraged to explore what it is to be human from a combined biological and social perspective, making use not only of the College’s own resources, but also those of the Pauling Human Sciences Centre, a few minutes walk away on Banbury Road. As well as providing a focus for many informal meetings and a location for lectures, this offers a library and well-equipped computer room.