In Depth: Faculty of Arts × Faculty of Social Sciences

Module: 01 Academic · In-Depth Dossier Last updated: 2026-07-10 This dossier traces the history, departmental structure and areas of strength of HKU's two humanities and social sciences faculties — the Faculty of Arts (1912) and the Faculty of Social Sciences (1967) — and follows the two cross-faculty platforms launched in 2025: the School of Future Media and the School of Governance and Policy. For a faculty-level overview, see faculties.md; for a full list of departments, see departments.md.

The short answer first: HKU's humanities and social sciences rest on two faculties. The Faculty of Arts, one of the three founding faculties of 1912, guards language and the humanities; the Faculty of Social Sciences, created in the postwar expansion of 1967, guards society and policy — and has since "budded off" three independent lines of teaching and research: law, journalism and governance.

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# At a Glance: The Two Faculties Compared

Together, the two faculties form the backbone of HKU's humanities and social sciences. What follows covers each in turn.

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# Part One · Faculty of Arts

# 1. Historical Position

The Faculty of Arts was one of the three founding faculties when HKU formally opened in 1912 (alongside Engineering and Medicine). According to the Faculty of Arts Wikipedia page^※, it is the oldest humanities faculty in Hong Kong and has been the heart of the University's arts teaching and research for over a century. The first BA students enrolled in October 1912; Professor A.E. Wrottesley-Salt was elected the first Dean of Arts in September 1913, setting the institutional framework for everything that followed.

In its first two decades, the Faculty's most important practical function was arguably training teachers. According to the Faculty's own history, by the early 1930s nearly half of HKU graduates living in Hong Kong came from Arts, and at least 55% of them taught in primary or secondary schools — in other words, a substantial share of the territory's English-medium secondary school teachers was supplied by the Faculty of Arts. This often-overlooked thread explains why the Faculty has long been regarded as the "upstream" of Hong Kong's modern education system.

For the same reason, HKU's teacher training was originally housed within the Faculty of Arts. According to the Faculty of Education's history page^※, a "Department for the Training of Teachers" was established inside Arts in 1917, only gaining independence in 1976 and becoming the Faculty of Education in 1984. In other words, today's Faculty of Education descends from the Faculty of Arts — a pattern that mirrors the way the Faculty of Social Sciences later gave birth to law and journalism as independent lines, and one snapshot of HKU's "big faculty buds off into new units" institutional history.

# 2. The Four-School Structure

According to the Faculty of Arts Wikipedia page^※, the Faculty is now organised into four Schools:

There are also three cross-disciplinary centres: the Centre for Applied English Studies, the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine, and the Centre of Buddhist Studies. According to the Faculty's assessment page^※, undergraduate degrees in Arts are awarded with honours classifications (the mechanics of the honours system are explained in academic-system.md).

# 3. Undergraduate Structure: Many Majors Under One Degree

The Faculty's undergraduate exit is a single four-year Bachelor of Arts (BA), but inside it is a highly flexible "major + minor" assembly. Students do not commit to a subject on entry; under broad-brush admission they spend the first year or two sampling disciplines before declaring a major, combining options across Chinese, English, history, philosophy, art history, comparative literature, linguistics, music and the various modern languages. This "broad first, specialise later" design locks into the framework of Common Core + major + free electives established when HKU adopted the four-year curriculum in 2012, and it is the institutional precondition that lets the Faculty host many small disciplines without each having to recruit students separately.

Beyond the single BA, the Faculty co-runs double-major / double-degree programmes with other faculties, including (per the Faculty's official pages and programs.md) a double degree in language education (Chinese or English), and the cross-faculty Literary Studies & Law (BA&LLB) combination. At postgraduate level the Faculty offers MA, MFA, MPhil and PhD programmes. The current Dean is Professor David Pomfret, a historian, supported by a team of associate deans for research, teaching, and undergraduate and postgraduate affairs.

# 4. What Each School Brings

The four Schools are not equal in weight; each holds a distinct place in Hong Kong's academic landscape. Per the Faculty of Arts Wikipedia page^※:

• School of Chinese — the heart of Chinese-language teaching and research at HKU, spanning Chinese language and literature, Chinese history and culture, and Sinology. The fact that Chinese and English form two separate but equally weighted Schools is the institutional projection of HKU's bilingual tradition: one School guards the Chinese language and classical learning, the other guards English language and literature, and neither answers to the other. In a colonial university where English long dominated, this is one feature that sets HKU apart from a purely British-style faculty.
• School of English — HKU's base for English linguistics and literature; English studies in Hong Kong began very early here. The companion Centre for Applied English Studies (CAES) carries a genuinely university-wide function: it provides academic English and language-enhancement courses to students across all faculties, making it a hub for English teaching at HKU rather than a service for Arts alone.
• School of Humanities — the largest and most eclectic School within the Faculty, bundling history, philosophy, art history, comparative literature, music and linguistics under one roof. Art history and music are scarce subjects in Hong Kong universities; HKU has been able to sustain independent teaching and research in them precisely because of the "comprehensive base" of this School.
• School of Modern Languages and Cultures — covers French, German, Japanese, Korean and other modern languages, and extends into area and cross-disciplinary directions such as European studies, Japanese studies and gender studies. It is a key pillar of HKU's internationalisation and regional studies. One thing to note: the Global Creative Industries programme, formerly part of this School's lineage, moved in 2025 to the newly established School of Future Media (see Part Two, Section 6), a sign that the boundary between the Faculty of Arts and media education is being redrawn.

In addition, the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine connects the Faculty of Arts with the Faculty of Medicine, bringing questions of medical history and ethics into a humanities frame, while the Centre of Buddhist Studies is a significant hub for Buddhist studies in the region.

The Faculty's list of research centres and programme directions is long; this dossier only sketches the skeleton. For details, refer to the Faculty's official pages.

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# Part Two · Faculty of Social Sciences

# 1. Historical Position

The Faculty of Social Sciences was founded in 1967, according to the Faculty's official page^※. It is a product of HKU's postwar expansion: after 1945 Hong Kong's population surged and social problems multiplied, and the University needed a faculty dedicated to producing social workers, administrators and policy researchers. The Faculty of Social Sciences was carved out of the existing arts and science disciplines precisely to answer that need.

More importantly, it is the "mother body" of several later faculties at HKU. The Faculty of Law began life in 1969 as a "Department of Law" under Social Sciences (gaining independence only in 1984; see deepdive-law.md); journalism education was likewise incubated inside the Faculty, with the JMSC attaching to it from 1999 (see Section 5). In short, law and journalism — today two of HKU's most publicly visible professional programmes — both flowed from Social Sciences as their "upstream." Combined with the Arts Faculty's nurturing of the Faculty of Education, this forms the "big faculty buds off" institutional tradition of HKU.

# 2. Departments and Schools

Per the Faculty's official page, it now comprises five departments and two Schools:

One clarification: these two "Schools" are not exclusive to Social Sciences. According to the official page, the School of Future Media is jointly supported by Social Sciences and Arts, while the School of Governance and Policy is co-built by Social Sciences, Business and Economics, and Law (see Sections 6 and 7 below). Strictly speaking, then, the Faculty's "core" is its five departments; the two new Schools function more as cross-faculty platforms attached to it than as internal departments in the usual sense.

Major research centres include the Hong Kong Jockey Club Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention, the Centre for Civil Society and Governance, the Centre for Criminology, the Sau Po Centre on Ageing, and the Stone Centre for the Study of Socioeconomic Inequality in Asia, among others (full list in Section 8).

Apart from SWSA and PPA, which get their own sections below, the remaining three departments each have their own focus:

• Department of Sociology — per the Department's official page^※, it has run full-time and part-time MPhil and PhD research degrees since the 1970s, with research interests spanning media and culture, anthropology and criminology. The Department often stresses Hong Kong's peculiar position — "on the edge of a rapidly changing Chinese society, yet an Asian metropolis" — as a distinctive field site for sociological research.
• Department of Geography — HKU's base for human geography and environmental research, with research themes close to urbanisation, sustainable development and governance. In recent years the Faculty has also established the Centre for Water Technology and Policy, echoing the Department's environmental-policy research direction.
• Department of Psychology — covers cognitive, clinical, social and developmental psychology, and connects to applied research through platforms such as the Centre on Behavioral Health. Psychology is both one of the Faculty's most popular undergraduate majors and a permitted second major for cross-disciplinary programmes such as the BJMAI mentioned below.

# 3. Department of Social Work and Social Administration (SWSA) — Where Hong Kong's Social Work Education Began

Per SWSA's at-a-glance page^※:

• SWSA is the first social work training body in the history of Hong Kong's professional social work education.
• HKU's social work training began in 1950 (at postgraduate diploma and higher-diploma level).
• In 1967, the Bachelor of Social Sciences in Social Work (BSocSc(Social Work)) replaced the certificate route, responding to an urgent community need for qualified professional social workers.

SWSA is therefore regarded as one of the original sources of social work professionalisation in Hong Kong, with long-standing regional influence in social policy and social work research. Its significance goes beyond "teaching early": social work in Hong Kong is a statutorily registered profession, and recognised qualifications map directly onto whether one may practise. A broadly accredited social work programme is thus, in effect, the upstream gate controlling the supply of the entire profession. From the postgraduate diploma of 1950, to the BSocSc (Social Work) of 1967, to today's parallel offering of bachelor's, master's and research degrees, each upgrade of SWSA's programme spectrum has tracked the expansion of Hong Kong's social service system and its demand for qualified social workers.

The interaction between social work education and the social service system is stated here as a matter of disciplinary-institutional fact; disputes over particular agencies or policies fall outside the scope of this dossier.

# 4. Department of Politics and Public Administration (PPA)

PPA is HKU's core unit for politics, public administration and international relations, with undergraduate majors covering both politics and public administration. It is also a major participant in HKU's cross-faculty double degrees — per the PPA programme page^※, the BSocSc (Government and Laws) & LLB, run jointly with the Faculty of Law, lets students earn degrees on both the social science and law tracks at once (the lineage appears in programs.md).

Since the School of Governance and Policy (SGP) was established in 2025, PPA and SGP have formed a complementary pair: PPA supplies the departmental grounding and undergraduate training in politics and public administration, while SGP hosts applied policy research through professional master's degrees and a cross-faculty platform. The two form a layered structure of "deep departmental scholarship" and "professional school" rather than substitutes for each other (see Section 7).

Disputed matters of university governance and campus politics are assigned to modules 13–16 by division of labour; this dossier confines itself to facts of academic structure.

# 5. The Journalism and Media Studies Centre (JMSC) — Where Hong Kong's First Journalism Master's Began

Journalism education at HKU has long been centred on the Journalism and Media Studies Centre (JMSC); it is both another instance of Social Sciences incubating professional education and the direct predecessor and "anchor" of the 2025 School of Future Media. Per the JMSC About page^※ and the JMSC Wikipedia page^※:

• JMSC was established in September 1999, under the Faculty of Social Sciences.
• Founder Ying Chan (陈婉莹) set up JMSC in 1999 and launched the Master of Journalism (MJ) programme, serving as founding director (1999–2016). Per Chan's Wikipedia entry^※, she had previously spent years as an investigative journalist in New York, winning several American journalism awards; on returning to Hong Kong she not only founded JMSC but also became the founding warden of HKU's Shun Hing College, bringing both "journalism practice" and "the college system" into the University.
• According to HKU's admissions page^※, the Master of Journalism was the first postgraduate degree in Hong Kong designed specifically to train working journalists, offered full-time over one year or part-time over two.
• JMSC takes an explicitly practice-oriented approach: per its official page, the curriculum stresses reporting and writing, data journalism and documentary production. A documentary production course was already on offer in 2009, and in 2024 it grew into a dedicated "Master of Journalism (Documentary Filmmaking Specialisation)" (MJ-DFS).
• According to JMSC, its graduates have gone on to international and regional outlets including BBC, CNN, Bloomberg and Reuters, as well as local news organisations; its internship network spans numerous international media, and the programme requires students to complete at least one summer media internship.

Reading this thread in sequence, JMSC's two-plus decades split into three phases: 1999–2016 was the founding era under Ying Chan, built on the English-language MJ and an international internship network; from 2009, the introduction of documentary production extended it from text-only journalism into visual storytelling; 2024–2025 marked the turn to "AI plus undergraduate" — first the MJ-DFS specialisation, then the upgrade to a full School of Future Media in 2025. The JMSC name survives to this day, as the base unit of the new School.

Evaluations of politicised topics such as press freedom and the media environment are assigned to modules 13–18 by division of labour; this dossier records only neutral facts about JMSC's structure, programmes and employment networks, without venturing commentary.

# 6. School of Future Media — The 2025 Reorganisation of Media Education

Media education at HKU saw its biggest structural change in nearly two decades in 2025. Per the School of Future Media's official page^※, the School of Future Media was established in October 2025, approved by the University's Senate, and formed from the merger of three units:

Two key points about this reorganisation. First, it straddles two faculties — the School of Future Media is jointly supported by Social Sciences and Arts, drawing journalism (from Social Sciences) and creative industries (from Arts) — previously in different faculties — onto one platform. Second, it writes "AI" explicitly into the School's mission. Per the School's official page, its programme portfolio now extends to:

• Undergraduate: Bachelor of Journalism, Media & AI (BJMAI) and BA in Global Creative Industries.
• Postgraduate: MA in Creative AI Film & Media, the Master of Journalism (MJ), the Master of Journalism (Documentary Filmmaking Specialisation, MJ-DFS), and research postgraduate degrees.

BJMAI is a newly designed double-major undergraduate degree: per the BJMAI programme page^※, students must choose a second major (in finance, computer science, psychology, the arts, or similar) alongside journalism, media and AI; the curriculum covers reporting and writing, visual production, strategic communication and "AI-assisted storytelling," and requires at least one summer internship. It marks JMSC's flagship journalism education formally extending from the postgraduate level down to undergraduates.

From an institutional-history standpoint, the way the School of Future Media was created says a good deal about HKU's recent organisational thinking: rather than carving another department out of an existing faculty, it extracted related units from two different faculties (journalism from Social Sciences, creative industries from Arts), reassembled them, and gave the whole the name "Future Media." This approach — "reorganise across faculties around an issue, rather than filing by traditional discipline" — matches the School of Governance and Policy, set up in the same year across three faculties, and together the two reveal HKU's turn to cross-faculty platforms to answer emerging fields (AI media, global governance). Whether such platform-style reorganisation genuinely breaks down departmental silos remains to be seen after a few years of operation; this dossier records only the institutional facts.

Institutional trajectory: from JMSC in 1999, to the documentary course in 2009, to the MJ-DFS specialisation in 2024, to the consolidated School of Future Media in 2025 — HKU's journalism education has broadly evolved along the path "practice-focused master's → documentary → AI and undergraduate." Politicised questions about journalism's external environment fall outside this dossier and belong to modules 13–18.

# 7. School of Governance and Policy (SGP) — A Cross-Faculty Platform for Governance Research and Teaching

Almost simultaneously with the School of Future Media, HKU erected a new cross-faculty platform for governance and public policy. Per the School of Governance and Policy's official page^※, the School of Governance and Policy (SGP) was established in 2025 and officially launched in April 2026, jointly supported by the Faculty of Social Sciences, the Faculty of Business and Economics, and the Faculty of Law (for cross-faculty collaboration mechanics, compare deepdive-business-economics.md).

According to the School's official page, SGP draws HKU's existing Asia Global Institute and the Centre for Contemporary China and the World into a single structure, with a focus on global governance and policy analysis. Its flagship programme is the one-year full-time Master of Governance and Policy (MGP), built around evidence-based policy training "across government, business and civil society." SGP sits academically very close to the Department of Politics and Public Administration (PPA) within Social Sciences — PPA provides the departmental grounding in politics and public administration, while SGP leans toward applied policy and cross-faculty integration, the two forming a division of labour between "deep departmental scholarship" and "professional school."

Evaluations of particular governance/policy controversies are assigned to modules 13–16 by division of labour; this dossier records only neutral facts about SGP's structure, affiliations and programmes.

# 8. Interdisciplinary Research Centres in the Faculty of Social Sciences

Beyond the five departments and the cross-faculty platforms, the Faculty's research-centre structure is worth recording. Per the Faculty's official page (2026)^※, the Faculty now hosts around ten research centres and institutes:

Among these, the HKJC Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention has long been regarded as the authoritative body for suicidology research in Hong Kong, its data and studies frequently cited by government departments and media as public health policy references; the Sau Po Centre on Ageing responds to Hong Kong's ageing reality, focusing on elderly care models and ageing policy; and the Stone Centre for the Study of Socioeconomic Inequality in Asia concentrates on wealth gaps and social mobility. Their common trait is that topics track Hong Kong's own concrete social issues — suicide prevention, population ageing, inequality, water governance — rather than simply following international academic fashions, reflecting the Faculty's disciplinary orientation of "grounded in the local, serving society."

Stepping back across both faculties: the Faculty of Arts guards HKU's language and humanities foundations, and for over a century has never left the core of bilingual (Chinese–English) teaching and humanistic research; the Faculty of Social Sciences is HKU's answer to postwar social demands, and has kept "budding off" into applied fields of law, journalism and governance. The School of Future Media and the School of Governance and Policy, both new in 2025, push that budding logic into a new phase of cross-faculty collaboration — disciplinary boundaries no longer map strictly onto single faculties, but regroup around real-world issues such as "media + AI" and "governance + policy."

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# FAQ

Which faculty is older, Arts or Social Sciences? Arts. The Faculty of Arts was one of the three founding faculties when HKU began teaching in 1912; the Faculty of Social Sciences came only in 1967, during postwar expansion — more than half a century later.

Why are both the Faculty of Law and journalism education said to be "from Social Sciences"? Because both originally sat under the Faculty of Social Sciences before becoming independent or semi-independent. Law began in 1969 as a "Department of Law" within Social Sciences and only became a separate Faculty of Law in 1984; journalism began with the JMSC set up under Social Sciences in 1999. That is why Social Sciences is called the "mother body" of several of HKU's professional faculties. In parallel, the Faculty of Arts gave birth to what later became the independent Faculty of Education — the institutional tradition of "big faculty buds off" at HKU.

Does the School of Future Media belong to Arts or Social Sciences? Both. According to HKU's official pages, the School of Future Media was established in October 2025, jointly supported by the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Faculty of Arts: it is anchored in Social Sciences' JMSC while absorbing the Global Creative Industries programme formerly under Arts. It is deliberately a cross-faculty school that breaks single-faculty boundaries.

Does the School of Governance and Policy duplicate the Department of Politics and Public Administration (PPA)? No. PPA is a department within Social Sciences, responsible for undergraduate training and departmental research in politics and public administration. The School of Governance and Policy (SGP) is a professional and research platform established in 2025 and co-built by Social Sciences, Business and Economics, and Law, focused on applied policy and cross-faculty integration, with the one-year Master of Governance and Policy (MGP) as its flagship. The two are layered — "deep departmental scholarship" versus "professional school" — not competing at the same level.

What is the difference between the Master of Journalism (MJ) and the new Bachelor of Journalism, Media & AI (BJMAI)? Level and positioning. The MJ is a postgraduate degree launched in 1999 — the first in Hong Kong designed to train working journalists — run full-time over one year or part-time over two, on a practical track. BJMAI is a newly designed undergraduate double-major degree combining journalism, media and AI, with students required to pick a second major. The former is JMSC's long-standing flagship; the latter marks journalism education extending toward undergraduates and "AI."

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# Unverified / To Be Added

• Exact founding years of individual departments in Arts/Social Sciences: some departments' official pages do not state a separate founding year (many evolved with their faculty or through reorganisations); this dossier records only those with clear sources.
• Final establishment details of the School of Future Media and the School of Governance and Policy: both cross-faculty platforms were only created in 2025; staffing, budgets and degree home bases are still being worked out, and admissions details and departmental boundaries should be checked against official pages — marked "per official pages."
• Enrolment numbers for certain small disciplines in Arts (e.g. music, art history): the official pages do not publish year-by-year enrolment; this dossier records only programme offerings and does not speculate on scale.
• Faculty QS subject rankings: these shift annually; ranking data belongs in module 03, and this dossier records no specific placements.

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