Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

About the Faculty

The faculty is an administrative grouping of four departments and three research hubs. At present, that comprises around 190 academic staff, backed up by 90 support staff, looking after a little over 5,000 undergraduate and around 800 postgraduate students. This represents around 25% of the total number of students currently studying within the University of Portsmouth (23,239 in 2011-12).

Our students

We have a healthy number of applications each year, including many EU and overseas students, for our suite of successful single and combined honours courses. Across the Faculty, this leads to a diverse student population with 22% of undergraduate students and almost 80% of postgraduate students studying part-time. International students comprise nearly 12% of the Faculty’s students, forming part of around 2,800 international students studying at the University of Portsmouth (2,841 in 2011-12). 

Our students benefit from our investments in the student experience, including:

  • new academic staff and increased contact time for early-stage students
  • intensive introduction to the university systems, and ongoing pastoral care
  • innovations in curriculum design, with research-informed teaching, choice in each programme and access to all academic staff
  • integrated use of the Virtual Learning Environment, with upgraded software, interactive experiences and an expanded team of VLE experts
  • improved buildings and IT architecture
  • personal development planning, featuring research and employability skills

We have a consistently strong record for its performance in the annual National Student Survey. In the 2011 NSS results, European Languages & Area Studies, History, Politics, Sociology (including Criminology) and full-time Education Studies all achieved high levels of student satisfaction with all of them placed nationally in the top quartile of their sector in terms of their scores for Overall Satisfaction.

Research Hubs

CEISR made the largest entry to the European Studies panel in the 2008 RAE with 41 staff entered. It was rated top for research in European Studies according to the research power Index compiled by the journal Research Fortnight.    

External partnerships

Our work with external partners includes funded research, consultancy and taught programmes, which currently brings over £3 million per year into the Faculty. We work with national and local government bodies such as the Teaching Agency, the National Offender Management Service, and police services such as the Surrey and Metropolitan forces. We work with a number of companies in the insurance, finance and training industries particularly in the field of counter fraud work. We also have major education contracts with the Malaysian Ministry of Education and the Turkish Ministry of the Interior.

Our location

The Faculty is currently located in four different buildings around the compact city centre campus: Park Building, Milldam, St George’s Building and Ravelin House. A relocation to a new £14million academic building in the heart of Portsmouth is planned.