Political Science

We study politics broadly, addressing interactions between the political system, the economy and civil society. A core theme of the teaching curriculum of the Department is Transnational Politics.

At the Graduate School of Social Sciences, we offer the following tracks in the Master’s programme in Political Science:

International orientation, research focus and diversity in methodology

The Master’s programme in Political Science is characterised by the following:

• Our staff is active in international networks, conferences and international collaborations, and also publishes in prominent international scientific journals.
• A substantial number of our staff is from outside the Netherlands.
• All courses are taught in English.
• The diversity of courses in the Master’s programme in Political Sciences is a result of recent academic research on current social problems and conflicts.
• The Master’s programme Political Science is theoretical and methodologically pluralistic. The Master’s has an open academic climate, which can accommodate the entire spectrum of methods in the social sciences, from pure positivism to interpretative approaches such as discourse analysis.

About the Department Political Science at the University of Amsterdam (UvA)

The teaching and research of our Department in Political Science aims to critically investigate and improve the democratic accountability, representative quality and legitimacy of contemporary governance. To pursue this broad mission, the Department is among the most comprehensive political science communities in Europe.

The faculty of Political Science represents full academic diversity in terms of substantive areas of research, methodological and epistemological approaches, and engagement with adjacent disciplines. The teaching and research emerging from this diversity does not evolve in isolation but rather through mutual engagement within a single departmental community. 

For more information about the academic staff members of the Department Political Science, please be referred to staff list. Each staff member maintains a UvA profile with information about research interests and publications. 

Key facts