Sociology

specialisatie Politics and Society

How can increasing political distrust, cultural conflicts and rising support for populist parties be understood?

What are the causes of political fragmentation and what are its consequences for governing modern societies? You learn to answer such questions by combining theoretical and empirical insights in analyzing key developments in both politics and society.

specialisatie Governance of Migration and Diversity

What are the opportunities for the management of migration flows? How to incorporate newcomers into host societies?

How to prevent discrimination and to promote contact and cohesion in culturally diverse societies?
The one-year Master programme in Governance of Migration and Diversity integrates knowledge from various disciplines with a focus on how public and private organisations can respond to the opportunities and challenges offered by migration and diversity. It brings together history, sociology, politics, international development and urbanism as a foundation for a better understanding of the governance of migration and diversity.

specialisatie Engaging Public Issues

This master programme enables you to understand how concerns such as climate change, racism or automation become public issues. It provides you with the tools to navigate such issues.

If you're interested in understanding how algorithms can be racist, how your smartphone is a political object, or how climate change becomes an issue for a growing number of people, this Master's programme is for you. It deals with contemporary public issues such as racism, automation or global warming that mobilize people as publics to work towards change. Such issues are shaped far beyond the traditional domain of electoral politics and involve publics with different identities and interests, and with different ways of imagining the future.

The Engaging Public Issues Master's programme enables you to understand how public issues emerge. It provides you with the tools to navigate and broker complex issues, to develop your own engagement with them and to intervene in them.

During the programme, you get to work on issues you choose, and ask questions such as:

• how are alternative futures imagined by climate activists, policy makers and professionals?
• how does public mobilization around sexism or racism take shape?
• how are public issues mediated through online platforms like Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook?
• how does the 'smart city' change urban politics?

specialisatie Social Inequalities

Social Inequalities offers insights into the causes and consequences of social inequality, the social processes that sustain it, and sheds light on ways in which social policies can reduce it.

The Sociology Master track Social Inequalities offers insights into the causes and consequences of social inequality, the social processes that sustain it, and sheds light on ways in which social policies can reduce it. The program consists of a series of courses in which issues concerning social inequality are approached from different scientific perspectives (i.e.
social stratification, the sociology of the family, the sociology of organizations, social policy, and welfare state research) and is characterized by theoretical pluralism. This approach is based on the idea that by offering a broad spectrum of theoretical insights, students are enabled to approach the issue of social inequalities from different perspectives and, on that basis, to arrive at a balanced assessment of (1) the ways in which these inequalities have increased or diminished over time, and (2) possible solutions to reduce them. The courses complement each other in terms of content and in terms of the level of analysis chosen, namely the micro level (the individual and the group), the meso level (the organizational level) and the macro level (institutions and environment).

specialisatie Organisational Dynamics in the Digital Society

This new master programme provides you with a broad, multidisciplinary perspective on organisational dynamics in the digital society.

Based on three excellent research programs in the field of psychology, public administration and sociology, you will learn to critically reflect on new forms of labour and organisations from a multidisciplinary perspective.