Student news

College renamed to reflect growth in arts

Introducing the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences

From Monday 1 August 2016, the College of Humanities & Social Science (CHSS) will be known as the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (CAHSS).

Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) became part of the University of Edinburgh’s College of Humanities & Social Science in 2011. This substantially broadened the range of Arts-focused disciplines already accommodated within the College, a range which now spans, inter alia, Art, Design, Architecture and Landscape Architecture, History of Art and Music.

ECA as a standalone institution had a history of reinvention, with attendant evolution in its name, from establishment as the School of Design set up by the Board of Manufactures in 1760, through to the Trustees’ Academy (housed at the University) which then became the municipal Edinburgh College of Fine and Applied Arts at the beginning of the twentieth century, before its association with the Universities of both Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh.

The name of our College had not yet similarly adapted and it is, arguably, insufficiently descriptive of the range of its teaching and research activities. Our College has developed in many important ways in the last five years. In renaming it the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, we are recognising this development and signalling our considerable breadth.

 

Professor Dorothy Miell

Vice Principal and Head of College