School of Liberal Studies

About School of Liberal Studies

How do we make sense of this fast-changing world? Can we explore opportunities within the massive transformations that are emerging globally? Can we understand contemporary convergences when digital meets human, technology permeates society and economy, and these intersections mutually shape each other? Overlooking the majestic Himalayas and nestled in the green forests of Dehradun, the School of Liberal Studies engages with these serious questions by drawing on the complementarities of various disciplines to enable our students to identify and anticipate these vexing transformations. SOLS at UPES positions itself around seven cross-cutting cluster areas of citizenship, education, environment, health, gender, technology, and urbanisation. These areas encompass the unabating contemporary challenges that our societies face at this juncture.

Conventional, one-size-fits-all pedagogies prove to be problematic. SOLS seeks to push the pedagogical boundaries by introducing innovative curriculums by striking a judicious balance between theory and praxis. With our focus on Connecting to the Neighbourhood, we encourage our students to apply their classroom learnings to their surroundings. An applied field-based approach trains students to ideate for a just and sustainable future.

Students are free to design their own degrees. They can choose from a range of subjects such as Economics, Politics, History, Psychology, Sociology, Literature, Mathematics, Statistics Digital Humanities and Cultural studies. SOLS equips students to dig deep into their preferred disciplines or majors and combine them with related minors. The comprehensive framework allows learners to pursue dual majors with multiple minors.

Our faculty, trained at the top varsities worldwide, encourages an interactive classroom environment where students learn to question, engage, present empirically driven arguments and articulate their ideas coherently. Our teaching and unique programs have attracted students from Universities in France and Sweden. SOLS provides an exclusive opportunity to be part of these Global Classrooms. SOLS houses well-equipped data , psychology, writing praxis and archival ideation labs. We provide a learning ecosystem to facilitate thought experiments.

SOLS’ lecture series invites leading global scholars from a multitude of disciplines to share their views and generate new ideas for humanities and applied social sciences. Since its inception in August 2022 SOLS lecture series has attracted renowned scholars from Stockholm University, the University of Arizona, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Massachusetts, Indiana University, the London School of Economics, and the University of Virginia, to name a few. This platform allows our students to engage and learn from leading global scholars in the field. Masterclasses with an appropriate tagline of learning from the best take pedagogy beyond classrooms. These masterclasses invite academics and expert practitioners to take on-campus classes on contemporary challenges and introduce students to topics of current relevance.

The combination of domain-specific knowledge and its application will hold students in good stead in their professional lives beyond the University Walls. At SOLS we strive to create changemakers and thought leaders of tomorrow.