The Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities (MCPH) began functioning in February 2010. This Centre was established to not only promote humanities and liberal arts education at Manipal University, but also to establish a world-class centre for teaching and research in philosophy and humanities.

The Centre will provide students access to quality education in these fields. With the increased awareness all over the world about the importance of humanities education, this Centre is designed to impart the best of both philosophy and humanities.

And as it is not possible to understand the nature of our societies or our experiences without drawing deep from both Indian and western intellectual traditions, MCPH will facilitate a cosmopolitan approach to education and research.

The fundamental task of the Centre will be to encourage critical and creative thinking across a wide variety of disciplines. One of its core aims is to foster original writing from India in the fields of social sciences and humanities.

While India has a large number of science and engineering graduates, the number of students who study the nature of science and technology are woefully low. Also, while there is a growing number of social scientists, both in academics and in organisations such as NGOs, there is a sad neglect of critical theoretical training in social science.

MCPH aims to redress both these problems in its innovative MA program in Interdisciplinary Humanities. The program incorporates both Western and non-Western intellectual systems, including philosophy, to give the students a strong theoretical foundation.

It also combines study of the sciences and arts as part of the degree on humanities. It is a unique course in that the subjects in the course are based on themes rather than on disciplines. Training in writing is an integral component of the course. The final semester involves submission of thesis.

Since these are also problems that confront students across the world, this course will be of great interest to international students. Students from Asia, Africa and the Middle East will find the course to be of use in formulating new and indigenous understanding of their societies while students from Europe, US and other western countries will find the training in non-western intellectual traditions a useful supplement to their understanding of other cultures.

A student who joins this course will have many opportunities such as pursuing higher education, teaching social sciences and humanities in schools, working in the NGO sector and so on. A rigorous training in philosophy and humanities will be of great help in a wide spectrum of disciplines and activities.

Additionally, the students will be exposed to a high-quality research environment, as a Centre will have a full-time PhD program. Since many conferences and workshops are part of the Centre’s activities, the student will be exposed to the leading thinkers of the world as well as learn new skills. Students will have to get independent funding or scholarship for their PhD and then get associated with this Centre.