New Faculty of Humanities

“This is the name day, birthday and the day of rebirth for this Faculty” said Ausma Cimdiņa at the opening event; she is former Dean of the Faculty of Philology and Arts and also the interim Dean of the newly established faculty. However, the main reason for merging the two faculties is eliminating the administrative barriers, for example, making it easy for students from both faculties to study courses offered at each faculty. According to the number of students, lecturers and scientific researchers working at the Faculty of Humanities it is one of the biggest at the University of Latvia and it comprises seven departments: Department of English Studies, Department of Oriental Studies, Department of German Language and Romance Languages, Division of Classical Philology and Anthropology Studies, Department of Lettonic and Baltic Studies, Department of Slavonic and Russian Studies, Department of Contrastive Linguistics, Translation and Interpreting. The statute of the Faculty of Humanities states that the aim of the Faculty is organisation and realization of scientific and innovative studies at UL in the fields of linguistics, literary theory, folklore studies, arts and anthropology, as well as in the regional and interdisciplinary studies. Although the Faculty of Humanities is newest at the University of Latvia, its origins can be traced back to 1919 when alongside faculties of natural and technical sciences, adopted from the Riga Polytechnic Institute, a Faculty of Linguistics and Philosophy was also formed and mainly focused on Baltic languages, history and culture. UL was the only remaining Baltic Sea region university of significance in which studies of various languages and cultures were isolated from each other, as it used to be during the Soviet times. On 30 November, 2009, the UL Senate approved establishing the Faculty of Humanities on the basis of Philology and Arts and Modern Languages Faculties. Students passed the winter examinations either as students of Philology and Arts or those of Modern Languages, but as of the spring term 2009/2010 they all belong to the Faculty of Humanities.


Translated by students of the professional study programme Translator of the University of Latvia.