The studies of the Faculty, in our beginnings, were defined as Languages, Literature, History, Economics, Philosophy, Education, Art and Architecture. Of these Economics, Education, Art and Architecture now belong to our sister-faculty, the Faculty of Social and Environmental Studies. Archaeology and Music have joined us over the years, and different specific languages have come and gone - though there are still staff concerned with some of the lost fields. The division between Arts and Humanities on the one hand, and Social and Environmental Studies on the other, ensures that three Institutes (of Latin-American, Popular Music and Irish Studies) sit a little outside the formal Faculty structure, and that some Departments and some scholars feel a dual allegiance. Most outsiders - reasonably enough - assume that an Arts Faculty must have something to do with Art, but a more accurate list would now read ‘Languages, Literature, History, Philosophy, Archaeology and Music’ (variously contained in different Departments). In celebrating a hundred years of scholarship the present Faculty recalls a larger past, and conceives a future.

The centennial celebrations (no doubt to be repeated when some other Founding Moment is remembered) have coincided with the Government's decision to cut back, or privatise, the growth of Universities - restoring, some may think, the situation where we first began: reliant on the generosity of benefactors, and the enthusiasm of scholars. We aim not to lose any further areas of expertise, and even to retrieve some.