How can we conceptualise the most important challenges confronting our global communities, devise new and innovative solutions to these challenges, and communicate the solutions effectively? The Bachelor of Global Studies course has been designed for students who seek to be leaders in applying their knowledge to these global challenges.
The course aims to develop leadership for social change focusing on key capabilities: creativity, teamwork, cross-cultural collaboration, critical thinking, self-learning, analytical writing skills. We seek to cultivate a rich understanding of the interplay of local, regional and global forces and equip you with sharp analytical abilities and flexible, imaginative and well-informed disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. All core units will enable you to apply your learning in practical and professional 'real life' contexts.
A key component of the course is a required period of study overseas that can be completed intensively at a Monash international campus or at a prestigious partner university.
Part of the required overseas component of the Bachelor of Global Studies can be completed by accessing the Monash Arts Global Immersion Guarantee - a guarantee* funded overseas experience to China, India, Italy, Indonesia or Malaysia. A new benchmark in globally-focused education, you will have the opportunity to spend two weeks studying overseas, with airfares and accommodation all covered as part of the degree.
*Eligibility requirements apply: First year Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Global Studies students (and relevant double degrees) in good academic standing, who have undertaken 24 points of credit (including a minimum of 12 points Arts) and have passed all their Arts units.
Double degrees
The Bachelor of Global Studies can be taken in combination with the following courses:
This will lead to the award of two degrees, the Bachelor of Global Studies and the degree awarded by the partner course. The requirements for the award of the Bachelor of Global Studies degree are the same whether the award is earned through a single or double degree course. Students should refer to the course entry for the partner course and the course mapcourse map (http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/2019handbooks/maps/) for the double degree for the requirements of the other degree.
Specialisations
Cultural competence
This is a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary field that fosters leadership in intercultural awareness. A critical component of this specialisation is language learning. Language is studied as a critical site of cultural interaction and negotiation, conflict and cooperation. Students can begin, or further their studies, in Chinese, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean or Spanish.
Human rights
Human rights is an interdisciplinary specialisation, examining the history and the nature of human rights and addressing basic issues such as: What are human rights? Are human rights culturally relative? How can human rights be justified? You will examine how these issues relate to pressing practical problems, for instance, how an understanding of human rights helps to address issues such as global poverty, unequal access to medicine, refugees, terrorism, warfare, children's rights, humanitarian intervention, torture, surveillance and more.
International relations
This is a discipline that examines the dynamics of global politics and economics, including the relationships between political institutions, international organisations, governmental and non-governmental players. It uses evidence-based explanations to study war/conflict, development, financial, and other crises at the global level.
International studies
International Studies examines the origins, processes and contestations of globalisation in the contemporary world. Ordinary people's experiences and responses to global integration are at the centre of our inquiry. It examines how local communities around the world embrace but also challenge aspects of globalisation, in four interlocking spheres of the human condition:
- Global health and disease
- Environment, cities and sustainability
- Crisis, conflict and disaster
- Commerce, technology and consumption
Global health and disease
The ways in which people experience good health or disease are increasingly influenced by global factors, such as the growing movement of people and animals, the spread of pollution and pathogens, the development of new medical technologies and treatments, and international institutions that coordinate health and security responses to disease outbreaks. Where and how people live and die - local matters - determines their access to primary healthcare, so an understanding of culture, global wealth distribution, and development is an essential component to studying global health and disease in this stream.
Environment, cities and sustainability
By the end of this century, the majority of the world's population will live in cities. Meanwhile, climate change is in progress, and the way we live within our natural and built ecosystems, among people and with animals, is inherently interconnected and subject to new pressures. This stream focuses on the impacts of a changing environment in an increasingly urbanised world. It provides students with the means to critically examine ways in which a more sustainable mode of living on the planet are being devised by researchers in a range of disciplines, and why the humanities and social sciences bring an important set of analytical skills to understanding the challenges of sustaining a just, prosperous life for all on the planet.
Crisis, conflict and disaster
Crises in our contemporary world take many forms - in the movement and displacement of people, discrimination, poverty and injustice, violence and suffering. War and political conflict, pollution and exploitation, natural and industrial disasters, and biological catastrophes like pandemic disease outbreaks, are among the many topics examined here. This stream brings these realms of human experience, as well as the increasingly internationalised responses to them, together in one stream to examine the causes and consequences of global crises.
Commerce, technology and consumption
Global trade, the production and consumption of commodities and culture, and the uptake of new technologies are among the primary ways that ordinary people experience and are drawn into globalisation. Flows of trade, money, ideas, entertainments and people are fundamental to an integrated world, and yet are also basic to how questions of justice, development and difference are negotiated and disputed. The tensions between the agency of individuals and the power of commercial and corporate entities - and between the local and the global - are core queries we pursue in this stream.