Graduate Programme

Welcome letter from the Programme Director

Thank you for your interest in our Graduate Programme at VU University Amsterdam.

Our graduate programme offers you the opportunity to become equipped with advanced quantitative and qualitative research skills in order to carry out high-quality research within universities or at different research institutes. Our goal is to provide you with an excellent theoretically and methodologically advanced curriculum in social research that enables you to interpret social problems, develop new explanations and challenge new workable policies with which to combat ongoing social setbacks.

As may be expected from an academic program, the current graduate curriculum is embedded within the faculty's research environment, which is premised on a strong interaction between education and academic research. An important feature of our graduate programme is that it exposes students to a comprehensive approach to social science research, both in explanatory and exploratory designs and in qualitative and quantitative designs. The focus of the comprehensive feature of the programme reflects the strength of the research programmes that have been highly valued for their outstanding academic research. Our program is flexible, internationally oriented and offers a wide range of options. Our students benefit from training in frequent small-scale seminars (max. 25 participants) in which dedicated lecturers provide intensive advice and supervision. Overall, the firm theoretical focus, the development of advanced research skills in small and intensive tutorials and the close interaction with top-researchers to work on inspiring socially engaged topics, make our graduate program unique and academically challenging for prospective students.

We are very proud of our programme and the successes of over 100 graduate students over the past years. Our MSR-alumni have been very successful in acquiring PhD positions in renowned universities in- and outside the Netherlands. Others have proved success in acquiring positions in public or private research institutes, in working at government agencies or in marketing and consultancy offices in the private sector. Most of our PhD alumni have been very successful in building a successful academic career. Many of them currently work as postdoctoral researcher, assistant professor or have become associate professor within VU University or other (inter)national universities.

On behalf of the Faculty of Social Sciences and the VU-GSSS Management Team we invite you to review the material on this website and to discover the strengths of our program. Please feel free to contact us with your questions. We wish you an inspiring academic experience!

Warm regards,

dr. Irma Mooi-Reci
Assistant Professor of Sociology | Programme Director of VU-GSSS