Related Programs, Research Units and Resources

Interdisciplinary Humanities Center

The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center was founded in 1987 to implement the Humanities Initiative begun by the President of the University of California.  IHC encourages interdisciplinary scholarship and instruction by supporting research projects, lectures, seminars, and conferences, as well as by sponsoring activities in the visual and performing arts.  Departmental faculty are active in several IHC-sponsored Research Focus Groups (RFGs) including the Archaeology RFG, the Ancient Borderlands RFG, and the South Asian Religion and Culture RFG.

The Bren School of Environmental Science and Management

The Bren School is one of the few schools in the United States to integrate science, management, law, economics and policy as part of an interdisciplinary approach to environmental problem-solving, and offers Master’s and PhD degrees in Environmental Science and Management.

Consortium for Comparative Research on Regional Integration and Social Cohesion

This consortium, based at the University of Luxembourg, is dedicated to the comparative examination of the human impacts of various aspects of regional integration across geographic areas and time periods through the creation of a cross-regional and interdisciplinary network through new research, symposia and exchanges. Among its thematic clusters are, “The Quality of Democracy,” “Comparative Border and Migration Politics,” Management of Strategic Resources, Environment and Society,” and “The Impact of Religion on Politics.”

The Environmental Studies Program

UCSB’s Environmental Studies Program is the largest such program in the United States, and one of the oldest. It has twelve core faculty and nine affiliates and offers B.A. degrees in Environmental Studies, B.S. degrees in Environmental Studies, and B.S. degrees in Hydrologic Sciences.

Global and International Studies Program

The Program in Global and International studies established in 1999 as one of the first interdisciplinary majors in international studies in the country that focused on globalization. The program now offers an M.A., as well as a graduate level PhD emphasis in Global Studies that Anthropology graduate students may elect.

Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Marine Science

The investigation and understanding of the ocean requires and interdisciplinary perspective of the ocean as an integrated system. The intrinsic interdisciplinary nature of modern marine science requires cross-disciplinary graduate-level training through a graduate program which brings together 47 marine faculty located in 9 departments on the UCSB campus. Areas such as biological, chemical, and physical oceanography, marine optics and remote sensing, marine geology and geophysics, marine biology, paleooceanography, ocean engineering and marine policy are typically pursued by students in this program.

Department of Chicano/a Studies

The Department of Chicano Studies at UCSB is the only such department in the University of California system.  It was formed as a result of efforts by Chicano/a activists and intellectuals and offers an educational model for other institutions that  focuses equally on scholarly interests in the role of knowledge in power structures and on activists’ concern for fostering real social change. The Department now offers  MA/PhD dgrees, in addition to a BA degree.

Department of Geography

The Department of Geography is the intellectual home for studies of Earth as the home of humanity.  Faculty research involves the integration of a wide range of sciences and uses new models to advance geographic information and integrate natural, physical and social sciences to better understand spatio-temporal dynamics.  The Department is at the forefront in the development of technology and infrastructure that allow geographic information to be found and accessed across distributed networks, as well as in the development of tools and computational models associated with geographic information and geographic information science.

Department of Feminist Studies

The Department of Feminist Studies (formerly Women’s Studies) is an “interdisciplinary discipline” whose faculty and students conduct research on the ways that the relations of gender intersect with race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, nation, ability and other differences and on how these interconnections affect every aspect of society.  The Department recently launched an MA/PhD program and Anthropology graduate students may elect a graduate emphasis in this field.

Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences