Welcome to the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) website!

HSS is a young school, founded in 2003. We have since grown, from an initial small group of professors and staff, to a current faculty comprising 100 members, supported by 50 administrative staff. Our undergraduate student numbers have also grown from just 53 to over 2000 undergraduate students today, and our graduate student numbers have increased to almost 300. This massive growth in our school’s population is due to dedicated support from our family of staff and students.

HSS offers degrees in 6 disciplines; namely Chinese, Economics, English Literature, Linguistics and Multilingual Studies, Psychology, and Sociology. We also offer all of these disciplines as minors, and offer four additional minors in Creative Writing, History, Public Administration and Translation. To broaden our students’ perspectives across disciplines, and to increase their employability, we also offer a double-degree in Economics and Engineering as well as joint integrated honours in Economics and Mathematics. Valuable additional exposure via our Student Exchange Programmes and the HSS Professional Attachment Programme are also offered. In all cases, the idea is to support, expand upon, and prepare our students for an excellent academic education, and help them to think globally and be relevant to the demands and challenges of the workplace today.

HSS’s Graduate Studies gives post-graduate students the opportunity to pursue their interests in research/coursework leading to challenging and rewarding careers in the academic, government and private industries.  We aim to develop our students by helping them to think critically and challenge the norms. For a young school, our post-graduate students have achieved much. Some of them are now faculty members in Auckland University of Technology, Aberdeen university in Scotland, and Beijing Normal University while others have attained senior research positions in major private organizations, and others have continued their graduate studies to even higher levels.

Our faculty members, I’m proud to say, come from renowned universities world-wide. In addition to being experts in their areas of research, they are also dedicated to teaching, motivating and inspiring the students. The doors of our friendly professors are always open to students, to guide and educate them to become mature, intelligent, thinking adults.

Apart from being caring mentors, our faculty are also prolific researchers. HSS also attaches great importance to inter-disciplinary research, in addition to the core areas of the various disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences.  Some of our key focused areas include Asia with respect to Asian cultures and traditions; Asian Economies (especially Singapore, East Asia and China); Chinese literature, philosophy and language; Asian and South East Asian literary and cultural developments; world literature and culture; sociology, ethnicity, globalization and social and cultural change; China-ASEAN relations; contemporary China conflicts and resolutions; modernization and public management.

As the Chair of HSS, I hope to advance the mission of making the school a leading intellectual centre for the humanities and social sciences, making valuable contributions to the advancement of knowledge and human life, and to offer expert policy-related advice to society as a whole.  I welcome you to join us in these endeavours.

Professor Euston Quah
Acting Chair
School of Humanities and Social Sciences