UCLA Establishes First Standalone Digital Humanities Department in the U.S.

The University of California, Los Angeles, has established a standalone Department of Digital Humanities, becoming the first U.S. university to offer a bachelor’s degree in the field, according to the university.

The move elevates digital humanities from an interdisciplinary program within UCLA’s humanities division to a separate academic department, reflecting the field’s growth at the university and its expanding role at the intersection of technology and humanistic inquiry.

Digital humanities brings together approaches from the humanities, computing and related fields to examine both technology and human experience. Scholars may use digital tools to study literature, language, history and culture, while also examining how technologies shape individuals, institutions and societies.

At UCLA, the field has been developing for more than two decades. The university launched its Program in Digital Humanities in 2010 as part of the UCLA College Division of Humanities. The program was initially expected to serve about 25 students a year.

Demand has grown substantially since then. More than 200 UCLA undergraduates minored in digital humanities during the 2025–26 academic year, making it the largest minor in the UCLA College and the second-largest undergraduate minor universitywide. In total, about 750 undergraduates and more than 30 graduate students took digital humanities courses during the year.

The new department will offer an undergraduate major leading to a bachelor’s degree, giving students a dedicated academic pathway into a field that has traditionally been housed within existing humanities programs, research centers or interdisciplinary initiatives.

Dominic Thomas, chair of the new department and UCLA’s Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French and Francophone Studies, said the department reflects the university’s view that digital humanities is both a viable area of study and an important component of contemporary undergraduate education.

“We need to be thinking and designing curricula that will define what our graduates end up doing as they go about imagining and shaping new futures in the global world,” Thomas said.

The curriculum will combine technical and humanistic training. Students will learn to use digital tools to investigate human culture, history and experience while also examining how those technologies are designed and deployed, whose perspectives they represent and how they affect society.

That approach is intended to distinguish digital humanities from a purely technical education in computing or data science. The department will draw on expertise in humanities disciplines as well as data science, social sciences and information studies.

“UCLA Digital Humanities has humanities at its core and also is interdisciplinary in nature,” said Alexandra Minna Stern, dean of the Humanities Division. She said the combination of disciplines would create opportunities for students to engage with questions that cannot be addressed through a single field.

The creation of the department also comes as universities grapple with how to incorporate artificial intelligence and other rapidly developing digital technologies into undergraduate education. For digital humanities programs, that presents a dual challenge: preparing students to work with new technologies while equipping them to critically evaluate their cultural, social and ethical consequences.

At UCLA, the new department is positioned to address both sides of that challenge. Its establishment marks a shift in digital humanities from a largely interdisciplinary area of study toward a formal academic discipline with its own department, curriculum and undergraduate degree.