History of Faculty

The Faculty of Arts (FA) was founded on February 10th, 1999 as the Faculty of Humanities (FHS). It thus became the seventh faculty at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. The Faculty was founded with an accreditation file proposal presented by Evžen Neustupný and Ivo T. Budil who then became the first Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. He led the faculty till 2005 when the Faculty of Humanities changed its name to the Faculty of Arts. Since then, there have been three more Deans; Ladislav Cabada led the Faculty till 2009, Pavel Vařeka till 2017, and the position is currently held by David Šanc.

The first and oldest fields of study at the Faculty were archaeology, social and cultural anthropology, and humanities, originally taught at the Faculty of Law. In the course of time, theory and philosophy of communication was added. The basic portfolio of the Faculty also included studies of the ancient Near and Middle East, today’s Middle Eastern studies, and languages for business use. In 2001, the list of study programmes was extended by political science, and in 2005, sociology and international area studies gained accreditation. The youngest programmes at the Faculty are history and social work. Doctoral studies were added to the bachelor’s and master’s programmes listed above in 2005. The accreditation of doctoral study programmes still continues today and opens the possibility to study at the FA in English.

The wide range of study programmes at the Faculty of Arts keeps growing with the modern trends. The Faculty is currently preparing for accreditation a bachelor’s programme Society and Politics and master’s programmes Artificial Intelligence Philosophy and Human Ecology.