Radboud University

MSc in Anthropology and Development Studies

Thematic tracks

Within this Master's programme, you choose one of three fine-grained urgent thematic tracks. Each track helps you understand and frame not only your research field, but also the world around you. After the first introduction meeting, you choose and enrol for the thematic course that introduces you to the theme. The theory that you study during the thematic course inspires you to come up with a research topic and gives you a solid foundation in relevant academic debates. Your final paper serves as a starting point for your literature review and theoretical framework of your research proposal.

Decolonising diversity in a polarised world

In an increasingly diverse and polarised world, belonging and inequality have become the object of intense debate and concern. Discussions revolve around multiple and intersecting dimensions of perceived difference: of race and ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality, mobility, legal status and indigeneity, rural and urban, and religion and the secular. In this thematic track, you seek to understand how citizens, social organisations and governments enact, experience and possibly deconstruct boundaries. You focus on new imaginations of relations across boundaries in everyday encounters. Where and when do new forms of conviviality and equity emerge? How do people break boundaries? And how do they create a new sense of belonging in diverse and polarised societies? Researchers and students of this track take on a postcolonial perspective and find inspiration in critical refugee studies, critical race and whiteness studies, feminist anthropology, queer studies, and post-secular studies. We explore both how people live with and across differences, and how diversity is taken up as an object of governance.

Ecological livelihoods and environmental justice

How can the diversity of views on global warming, biodiversity loss, or sustainability be explained? In this track, you study the social nature of human relatedness to the environment from an interdisciplinary perspective. You learn about the complex and changing capacity of solidarity within the more-than-human world, focusing on classical social domains such as gender, religion and kinship, and how these are shaped through diverse understandings and lived practices in a multi-species environment. Understanding the diversity of ecological livelihoods also implicates a critical focus on volatile structures of socio-political and economic inequalities concerning land, the increasing depletion of natural resources and the transition to renewable energies. This track invites you to delve deeper into the multifaceted questions of the Anthropocene.

Grassroots initiatives, development and the state

People have always, individually or collectively, tried to ‘make the world a better place’. Many organise themselves in grassroots initiatives aimed at some form of development. Occasionally, such initiatives are ‘enforced’ from above. Grassroots initiatives and their challenges raise many questions about how they take shape and how they relate to governments and the private sector. Who, for example, takes the lead and who is left out? How do authorities, such as governments, corporations, and (development) NGOs, encourage and/or react to these initiatives? This thematic track inspires you to study the large diversity of grassroots initiatives that support transitions in the global North and South.

Theory courses

Contemporary Theory of Societies and Change

Contemporary societies are changing fast and so do the aspects to understand, capture and analyse these processes of change. This course offers you cutting-edge theories, such as on practices, social navigation, assemblages, well-being, natural resources and decolonisation. These help to understand the processes of change and development. You develop a strong level of empirical reasoning in the discipline of anthropology and development studies and learn to connect the theoretical debates and concepts to concrete cases in your own field of interest.

Method courses

Advanced Research Methods

You gain practical experience with methodologies that are essential to both anthropology and development studies. This course presents a review of advanced and the latest methodologies, in particular ethnography, social network analysis, and experimental and survey methodology. You will practice a number of methods and research techniques that prepare you for designing and conducting your research.

Research Design

In this course, you review key themes and methodological and ethical dilemmas regarding the development and design of a research project, whilst simultaneously learning how to deal with them in the design of your own research. In addition, we discuss important themes that are essential for a solid research design, such as the conceptualisation of the field, access to the field and rapport with research participants, but also triangulation and reflexivity. In the second part, you develop your own research project and write an in-depth research proposal.

Master's project

Field Research

Field research is a key component of this Master’s programme. You carry out three months of field research on a relevant issue in your thematic domain. You can choose to stay in the Netherlands or to go abroad to do fieldwork and collect data. You are encouraged to formulate a research question in consultation with social partners or organisations, such as city councils, NGOs, embassies, or education and healthcare institutions, which makes your research not only academically, but also of socially relevant.

Reflecting and Reporting

In this course, you learn to critically reflect on your research findings and make these findings available and understandable for relevant interested parties. You will learn to present your findings in both a Master’s thesis and a public article, such as a blog, column or policy brief.

Master's thesis

Your Master’s thesis contains the findings of your research, analysed from a theoretical perspective and presented in a written report of a high academic standard. You will be supervised by our expert staff. By combining theoretical views and ideas with your own research findings, you contribute with your thesis to scientific debates on anthropology and development studies.

The ADS Master’s programme offers students a unique skill set that prepares them for a broad range of jobs. These skills are based on a combination of an open, investigative and reflective attitude, sociological imagination, theory-driven analysis of diverse life worlds, inequality and power, and the capacity to weigh the necessity and possibility of interventions in a pragmatic way. At the end of this Master's you are capable of conducting your own research, know how to find your feet in diverse settings, assess and analyse complex situations and communicate your findings to various audiences.

After your studies

Possible jobs are that of a policy officer, advisor, or researcher for the central or local government, an advisor at aid, welfare and civil society organisations such as the UN, Cordaid or the Dutch Council for Refugees, a researcher at a university or NGO, trade union, consultancy firm or private institution or as a journalist or communication officer.

Possible occupations

• Policy officer
• Journalist
• Communication officer
• Scientific researcher