Introduction to the programme
- Introduction
- Introduction video - presentation by professor Richard Griffiths
- First Year programme
- Second Year programme
- Final Year Programme
Introduction
Fascinated by foreign countries around the globe, but want to know more? Addicted to international news and events but feel a need for deeper understanding?
The new International Studies degree offers you a unique combination of area studies, placed in an international setting and provides the opportunity to learn a foreign language. After a broad semester, you specialise in one of nine world areas and one of its languages. You analyse your area of choice from cultural, economic, historical and political angles and compare them within an international perspective.
Comparative area studies
The BA International Studies is designed around three elements: core courses that introduce disciplinary concepts and that analyse the international setting, area courses that analyse the situation in a selected region from a disciplinary, and increasingly interdisciplinary, perspective and language courses that prepare students for access to the cultural context in the relevant language. The core concepts, ideas and methods are taken from four broad disciplinary approaches:
- History (mostly modern history)
- Cultural Studies (modern cultural phenomena in their societal settings)
- Economics (and the concepts from International Political Economy)
- Political Science (and Sociology and Anthropology)
The areas offered in the degree, and their corresponding languages are:
|
Area |
Foreign Language |
|
East Asia |
Chinese, Japanese (Korean) |
|
Latin America |
Spanish (Portuguese) |
|
Middle-East |
Arabic (Persian, Turkish) |
|
North America |
French, Spanish |
|
Russia and Eurasia |
Russian |
|
South Asia |
Hindi |
|
Southern Africa |
Afrikaans (Swahili) |
|
South-East Asia |
Indonesian, Spanish |
|
Western Europe |
Dutch, French, German, Spanish (Italian, Portuguese) |
The programme guarantees the key languages for each area (indicated in normal type) but will offer more (indicated in italics)if there is sufficient demand. Moreover, if possible, students may attend language classes with other students at the Leiden campus. The first semester is common for all students after which they choose an area for further specialization, and a corresponding language for study.
Once the second semester starts, the core disciplines, the areas and the foreign language training all being to interact. These four disciplinary approaches are interdependent and mutually reinforcing, allowing students to develop increasingly sophisticated frameworks analysis. These ideas are explored and tested inside the chosen areas, often also with a comparative approach within the area. By the end of the third semester students choose from a range of core- and area-electives designed to exploit and extend their increasingly sophisticated analytical capacities and ambitions. On the basis of these fourth semester courses and in consultation with their supervisor, students choose a thesis topic.
Introduction video - presentation by professor Richard Griffiths
fswweb19.fsw.leidenuniv.nl/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=32a1460ee462464c8d21ee52dbba4d961d
You can watch the video 'Introduction to BA International Studies' by prof. Richard Griffiths online, which was taped at our Open Day on April 21st 2012. The duration of the video is 50 minutes.
First Year programme
During the first semester, students take the following courses:
- Configuring the World - 10 ECTS
- World History - 5 ECTS
- Introduction to Area Studies – 5 ECTS
- Introduction to Areas – 5 ECTS
- Introduction to Academic English - 5 ECTS
After the first semester, throughout the rest of the first and second year, all students follow one non-native (and non-English) foreign language related to their area of study. The language courses progressively build fluency in the foreign language, thereby providing the key to appreciating different cultural settings in the native language. There are opportunities for further language training in the final year.
The second semester starts with area courses for history, focusing mainly on post-war developments. These courses build on the World History course in the first semester. At the same time, the core courses begin to address the concepts, theories and methods involved in both economics and in cultural studies. Another core course in this semester is Philosophy of Science that addresses broader questions on the nature of knowledge and the means for testing it in different cultural settings. Finally, students embark on their language training.
After the first semester, it is easy to understand the structure of the degree as revolving around three pillars; the core courses, the area studies and the foreign language. The core courses are where the basic concepts and disciplines are represented, and their functions evolve as the degree progresses. In the beginning, they provide the basic conceptual and analytical tools for students to follow the subsequent area studies. In each case the core course is taught in the semester prior to the follow-up courses in in the international and/or comparative setting.
The area courses also build on the disciplinary perspectives opened by the core courses, allowing the students to apply their knowledge to their specialist regional settings, and to observing differences within those settings. These area courses are planned jointly to ensure a symmetry in concept and content, so that students in different areas are addressing broadly the same issues at the same time, allowing dialogue across the regional divide.
BA-IS per semester
Second Year programme
In the third semester the area courses use the disciplinary expertise acquired in the previous semester to analyse cultural and economic phenomena in their areas of specialization. At the same time, the core courses provide an international setting for the culture courseand, in small tutorial groups accompanying the lecture, allow students from different areas to discuss these issues from their various perspectives. A further core course, starts a new disciplinary cycle with an introduction to comparative politics. Language teaching continues throughout the semester.
The fourth semester again has the area and core courses building on the basis laid by the comparative politics course given in the previous semester, as well as the course on the international economic setting. By now, however, the students are ready and able to combine these different perspectives into more sophisticated and complex frameworks for analysis. The core and the areas now offer a range of electives from which students select topics for further specialist study. The electives are designed to build on the research experience of individual staff members or on active research projects in the respective departments. Students may also decide to conduct their final year thesis work within the framework of one of the electives. Students take one core and one area elective. In this semester the language training focuses on the preparation for the period of study abroad.
Final Year Programme
The Leiden University system allows half a year of study (30 ECTS) to be taken outside the regular teaching program (Discretionary Space). In the International Studies degree, this is spread over the final year of study. It allows the student some considerable flexibility is designing the direction of study, and future MA and/or career trajectories.
Let us start with the ‘fixed’ part of the program. The entire (half of the) fifth semester is taken up with research (and writing) of the bachelor thesis (15 ECTS), chosen by the student in consultation with the supervisor. Students are encouraged, but not obliged, to spend this semester studying or working abroad in their region of specialization, and the program will arrange reciprocal arrangements with at least one university in each of the areas offered.
In the sixth and final semester students take part in one of the thesis seminars, combining students with closely aligned thesis topics, where they will be required to place the thesis in an international comparative context. They will also follow an elective, selected from the fourth semester list and a course on advanced theory.
In the Discretionary Space, students have several options for either 15 ECTS or for the entire 30 ECTS.
- They may choose to increase their language proficiency, either by taking more advanced language training while they are abroad or by following courses offered by the degree.
- They could undertake academic courses abroad from those offered by our partner universities or, in consultation with the exam committee, courses from other university departments.
- Alternatively, they could employ 15 ECTS to undertake an internship either in the Netherlands or abroad. The Faculty has a bureau specifically to advise students and to help them apply for internships, all of which have a research component and all of which are supervised by a member of the academic staff.
- Another option is to employ all 30 ECTS to follow a second area trajectory. In this case students would follow the area courses in history, politics economics and culture, and an elective and combine it with an advanced essay (or mini-thesis).
- Finally, the student may follow one of the special minor programmes offered by Leiden University.