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Imogen graduated last month with first class Honours in Arts. This is an edited version of her valedictory speech.

For some of you, this will be the last step of your journey through the education system. In my case, although this is the end of my time at UWA, it is not the end of my time at university-I will shortly be enrolling in a PhD program.

In fact, just last week I was in the United States visiting some of the graduate schools from which I'd received offers, in order to choose where I will be heading next.

My education here has given me what, I believe, is the most valuable gift an education can give-and that is choice. The capacity to choose whether I wish to pursue yet further education; to choose where I will do this; to choose, after that, amongst a number of career paths and prospective futures which, thanks to my education here, I am qualified to follow.

I want to talk to you about the importance of the arts in society, a subject about which, I think, we must all be concerned.

The arts are frequently undervalued by society at large, not seen as yielding the immediate practical benefits of science, technology, of business, or lampooned for purportedly unnecessary or obscure areas of research interest. I am assuming that I do not need to justify the value of the arts to you-of the value of thought and feeling, of the benefits of intellectual stimulation, of preserving our history and coming to understand how and why our culture is what it is.

The immense privilege of being able to read words written a thousand years ago, which still have the power to communicate to us; of the fact that no university can hope to be taken seriously intellectually if it neglects its arts departments, and of the fact that countries which neglect the arts and education in favour of more ‘practical' economic incentives are perceived as culturally and socially stagnant, and are taken, in turn, less seriously on the international stage.

Personally, I'm not a fan the arbitrary, artificial division between the arts and the sciences-the so called ‘two cultures' divide. To quote E.A. Milne, ‘the mathematician ... describes the ripples of the pond in terms of his own symbols; the poet describes them in different symbols.'

Just as I hope those graduating from other faculties over the next few weeks will continue to read books, listen to music, and appreciate artworks, I hope you all will educate yourselves about scientific developments, and appreciate the beauty of mathematics as something akin to the beauty of poetry or painting.

Indeed, perhaps in recognising that the arts and sciences are inextricable from each other, we can effect the salvation of the arts themselves. In all fields, breadth of knowledge enables us to produce more inventive, creative and effective solutions to problems; use your knowledge, as arts students, to add breadth to contemporary debates not just in the field of the arts, but on all subjects.

A few years ago at a conference I heard a paper given by Eileen Joy on the marginalization of medieval studies. Her solution was that medieval studies had to go out into the world and infect all other subjects, like a virus, until it was so interwoven with each discipline that it was impossible to extricate. In becoming necessary to other subjects, it would be able to demand the recognition that it deserved.

The arts, I believe, are already intertwined with almost every facet of human existence-but we need to bring this to light, show that this is the case. This is what I hope you will be able to do now that you are leaving university-not just confine yourself to the arts, but be creative, be daring, and infect the world with the knowledge that you have gained.