Courses & curriculum 2023 - 2024

Thesis
Proposal

Academic & Professional Skills

In this semester you will be introduced to the field of Global Studies. The world is a big and interconnected place, especially nowadays. What you do in your country affects many people in distant places. And your life is shaped by the choices made by other people, some of whom live far away. There is a continuous flow of goods, people, cultural norms and ideas happening. These global flows influence the economy, politics, culture, the law and the environment, as well as many other aspects of life. This means that if we intervene in our economy, it might change the flow of people in another country, which might mean that the culture of some other country is affected, which could prompt a change in the law, which might have environmental consequences for the entire region, including us. If you want to understand our world, then you need to think very carefully about the connections between people, states, countries and disciplines. This is what Global Studies is all about. It provides the tools you need to study those connections and their effects, so that you get a better sense of what is happening and can make responsible choices about how you want to act in the world. In this semester’s theme track, you will be introduced to the field of Global Studies. We will discuss the phenomenon of globalisation and its causes and effects, but also how it can be studied by combining various academic disciplines – such as history, economics, law and geography – in an interdisciplinary fashion. We will also reflect on what globalisation means for the obligations we have towards other people, and how we should behave to meet these obligations. 

It’s not just objects and pollutants that flow around the world. People do as well. Semester 3 will provide you with an overview of the complexities of contemporary mobility trends and their legal, psychological and social consequences for global citizenship and inclusion. You will be encouraged to take two perspectives in understanding human movement: the analytical and the experiential. On the analytical level, you will be introduced to the core concepts and theories related to migration and citizenship, including legal categories and channels for mobility and the individual motivations for mobility. On the experiential level, you will explore different facets of migration through interrogation of your own and others’ migration trajectories and aspirations.

In semester 4, we will look at issues of tolerance and beliefs from various disciplinary perspectives including Social Psychology, Religious and Cultural Studies, Global Health, and Anthropology. You will gain an understanding of how beliefs and tolerance are constructed and how they impact the global challenges we face today. Here, we will reconnect with content learnt about globalization in Semester 1 by analysing flows of ideologies, identities, ideas, and technologies, looking at how these are received in new contexts, how they underlie social differentiation, and how they impact social cohesion. You will also analyse, and present on, case studies that hone in on (in)tolerance. In that process, you will use the techniques that you will have learned in Semester 1 on how to conduct a stakeholder analysis. We will examine the roles of diverse stakeholders, identify their standpoints, and develop a framing of the case(s) that takes the diversity of standpoints into account.

Two strands of semester 1 will return in our discussion on Peace & Justice in Semester 5. Firstly, we will return to the debate about mutual obligations towards each other as a fundamental ingredient of ‘justice’ and discuss how just and peaceful societies manage conflicting obligations. Secondly, we will observe the flows of globalisation as they apply to fundamental rights, legal practices, economic development and political institutions. The field study in the fifth semester also offers an opportunity to put your skills as a global citizen to the test and will require that your methodological skills have been honed throughout the first two years of Global Studies.

In Semester 6, you will work on a local or global 21st Century learning dilemma together with a stakeholder. You will further develop the project management skills and analytical insights you will obtain in Semester 1, while you work together with external stakeholders to define, analyse and solve a problem. Semester 1 discussions on (the obligations of) globalisation will deepen in those project teams that cover global learning topics (e.g., in teams that tackle trickle-up educational innovation). Reflection on your future self in Semester 1 will come full circle in Semester 6 as you weigh all your learning experiences and design a personal development plan for the years to come.

During Semester 6, you will also work on your Bachelor thesis. The thesis will be on a topic that you select. You will need to explain in what way the topic is related to theories of globalisation that you have studied during the semester. Furthermore, the analysis will need to integrate at least two disciplines that you will have studied throughout the programme, some of which you may have learned about in the final semester. You will apply the methods learned throughout the programme to your analysis, and visualize processes, flows and results using techniques from the Visualization Lab. Finally, you will apply the academic and global citizenship skills learned throughout the programme in the process of producing your thesis. Overall, you will need to produce an extended academic analysis and argue your findings convincingly. You will need to position yourself within the issue you are studying and to think through the ethical issues of whatever intervention you propose.