Graduate Honours Interdisciplinary Seminars

Collaborative exploring across boundaries

Master’s students looking for an explorative academic challenge can participate in the extracurricular honours programme Graduate Honours Interdisciplinary Seminars (GHIS). You can follow this programme (10 EC) on top of any Master’s degree of the Utrecht University.

Navigate complexities and opportunities

Today’s global and local challenges are becoming more complex, often feeding into more broad and dynamic collaborations. GHIS is designed for curious, open-minded and broadly societally interested students that are eager to develop interdisciplinary research skills that help combat these complicated challenges. GHIS facilitates the interaction between students and researchers to jointly explore perspectives in the context of real-life cases and research examples. You choose 3 seminars in which top UU researchers challenge you with thought-provoking topics and original assignments. Joint sessions and a trip allow you to socialize with all GHIS students and learn, for instance, about observation, integration and scientific communication. A group project wraps it all up. Think of a round table discussion or grant proposal. Throughout the programme, you'll learn what skills are needed to design and engage in inter-, and transdisciplinary research and how the role of academics in society is changing. 

Image of GHIS students during the Texel excursion

Themes and topics

Examples of challenges to explore include climate change, food scarcity, economic crises, health crises, destabilizing countries and transnational organized crime. Through discussions with students of other disciplines and different lecturers, you will find that such topics are multifaceted and require an interdisciplinary approach. This teaches you to not only work together with researchers from other fields but also to reflect on your own expertise. Seminars will be given by well-known professors such as Marc Bonten, José van Dijck, James Kennedy and Henk Kummeling, by young ambitious academics associated with the Utrecht Young Academy, and by researchers of interdisciplinary projects. 

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