About NESA

The Netherland School of Anthropology is a joint initiative of the five Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology programmes in the Netherlands. After a successful research evaluation of all five programmes in 2020, the international committee which conducted the evaluation recommended the programmes to strengthen their cooperation, especially in support of the next generation of anthropologists.

Need for more specialised anthropology courses

As a response to this advice, the Universities of Amsterdam, Leiden, Utrecht, the Radboud University Nijmegen and the Vrije Universiteit have come together to develop a comprehensive national training programme for their graduate students. In this training programme, the five participating institutes will combine the expertise and networks of their staff to offer their students insights in trending and urgent debates within anthropology and sociology, and prepare PhD candidates for doing their fieldwork through an intensive research methodology course. Equally important is that NESA will also serve as a platform for students from the different universities to come together and learn from each other’s experiences. 

The PhD-training programme

The PhD-training programme is a one-year programme. It consists of a series of five masterclasses on current and trending debates in our discipline, and an intensive research methods course taking place in the fall. Each masterclass will take place at a different university, to allow you to familiarize yourself with the different universities participating in this initiative. 

The training programme started in February 2022 with a masterclass on the Anthropology of the Anthropocene. The programme was officially inaugurated by Prof. dr. Paul Wouters, the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Leiden University.

Interested in the programme? Please contact Sarah Bozuwa.