In the big history course, renowned experts from astrophysicists to historians will guide you in exploring these questions. They will take you on a journey from the Big Bang to the present. Along the way, you will connect various natural and human historical processes to each other. You will also connect these processes to an aspect of the world around you of your own choice, such as your phone or coffee. You will explore your topic’s place in big history using any format you like, such as an essay, a podcast or a virtual museum.

As a result, you will learn to integrate disciplinary perspectives and spatial and temporal scales. You will see and appreciate how your chosen topic fits into a bigger picture and discover what new questions and creative insights emerge from that. In the process, you will strengthen your complexity awareness and capacity for out-of-the-box thinking.

Coordinator

Dr. Esther Queadackers

Timetable

You can find the timetable on Datanose.

Entry requirements

Open to second-year and third-year UvA Bachelor's students and other interested parties, such as contract students or students from other Dutch higher education institutions. Master's students can only participate if there are still spots available.

Registration

UvA Bachelor's students can register from 1 to 8 December 2025 in the GLASS registration rounds. Master’s students can send a short motivation to keuzeonderwijs-iis@uva.nl.

‘Bijvak’ students and contract students can register from 1 December 2025 until two weeks prior to the start of the course, by completing the online registration form.

If you have any trouble while registering, please contact us at keuzeonderwijs-iis@uva.nl.

Please note: as a contract student you can choose to participate either including or excluding assessment. If you choose the latter, you only have access to the seven lectures of the course. If you also wish to attend the seminars, please choose 'including assessment'.

Costs

Prices can be found on the IIS website.

Microcredentials for professionals 

Contract students and UvA staff who successfully participated in the course’s assessment will receive information to obtain a digital certificate in the form of a microcredential. Big History is part of the national microcredentials pilot, with which the higher education field is shaping a system for online certification of individual educational units. More information about the pilot can be found here.

SDGs in education

The IIS strives to reflect current societal issues and challenges in our elective courses, honours modules and degree programmes and attempts to integrate the following Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in this course. For more information about these goals, please visit the SDGs website.