New beginnings at International Studies? Word of Welcome by Programme Chair Joost Augusteijn
After an un-Dutch warm and dry summer, the start of the academic year seems to have been announced by the customary and in this case keenly anticipated rain. The end of summer always brings a moment of celebration and an opportunity for new beginnings. We ended another successful year for the programme with a very fine ceremony at which we celebrated the graduation of 357 students with many parents and friends present. It was also a new beginning for our more than 500 strong 2018 cohort of students. They will start a new phase in their lives, for about half of them in a new country, for most of them in a new city and for all of them with new challenges and opportunities provided by our programme.
There are also a few other new beginnings to mark. We will for the first time start the new year with an official opening of our programme with a lecture by the famous Harvard historian Sven Beckert, who will speak on the impact of one of the first ‘global empires’, that of cotton! An opportunity for students from all cohorts and staff to meet each other. We hope to make this an annual event testifying to the vibrancy of International Studies. The implementation of the changes in the programme also means that the courses in our new second year structure will be taught for the first time. We look forward in particular to the new thematic seminar emphasising the training in research methods, which we hope will benefit the students in their further studies.
The Programme Board has also been thinking about desirable new initiatives in the upcoming year, next to her task of ensuring the smooth running of the programme and guiding the further implementation of the new structure, which includes the development of the new third year course called Language in Practice, designed to teach the use of the acquired language skills in research. A more general task we have set ourselves is to further develop a student centred educational culture in the programme.
One of the elements in this will be the organisation of more extracurricular activities open to our students and aiding them to develop themselves further. Here we are thinking of a programme of lively debates, lectures and presentations by academics and others from outside the programme. Another possible avenue will be strengthening the ties with international organisations in The Hague and beyond to provide employers with some potential connections and experience with our students, and finally maybe even finding a place for the teaching of statistics in the programme for those who would want that. We also will explore the possibility of making it possible for all students to specialise somewhat in certain core themes taught in the programme, like, for instance, international organisations, human rights, environmental issues, communication, conflict, economics or gender and ethnicity.
All the above cannot happen without the input from students and staff alike. I very much look forward to another year of dedicated activity and development from all of us.
Dr. Joost Augusteijn
Chair of the International Studies programme