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Are you interested in themes such as adolescents' substance use and addiction problems, antisocial and criminal behaviour, marginalisation and exclusion, excessive use of social media, and social inequalities and mental and physical health? Would you like to know why Dutch youngsters are among the happiest in Europe?
The Master’s programme Youth Studies will enable you to look beyond the limits of individual fields of study. You will learn to observe and examine specific issues by combining different social scientific disciplines (psychology, pedagogy, sociology, anthropology) in an interdisciplinary approach.
By integrating knowledge from different disciplines you will be able to advance fundamental understanding of youth issues and to address youth problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of research. Additionally, you will gain knowledge about policies and interventions regarding youth issues and develop academic skills to conduct research in the field of youth.
This one-year Master's programme relates to topics and challenges relevant and, often, unique to youth such as:
We have a strong (and growing) research team, conducting research on a broad range of youth issues, changes in youth welfare and youth policy. The programme’s instructional staff consists of researchers with excellent national and international reputation, including Prof Tom ter Bogt, Dr Regina van den Eijnden, Prof Catrin Finkenauer, Dr Zeena Harakeh, Dr Ina Koning, Dr Margreet de Looze, Dr Margot Peeters, Dr Gonneke Stevens, Prof Maykel Verkuyten, Prof Wilma Vollebergh and Prof John de Wit.
Through an innovative approach in interdisciplinary science, the Master’s programme will prepare you for the challenges associated with today’s increasingly global and diverse workforce in academic institutes, policy organisations, and NGOs. It offers you an exciting choice of themes, perspectives and methodological approaches and provides you with the opportunity to personally design an important part of your Master's research. You will also participate in an internship in an organization in the professional field of youth studies. This freedom of choice stimulates your personal development and optimally prepares you for a career in research or advisory positions.
This Master’s programme will prepare you for a career in the field of youth research, youth welfare and youth policy. By acquiring in-depth knowledge on youth issues, academic skills and competencies you will develop into a highly-qualified science practitioner. You will receive a structured and systematic training in theoretically and methodologically advanced research that will equip you to help solve social problems in the field of youth either within or outside of academia.
With the Master’s programme Applied Cognitive Psychology, you will apply the most up-to-date knowledge of cognition to situations and solutions for problems that occur in daily life. Students will apply knowledge of human cognitive, sensory and motor systems in real-life situations.
During this one-year programme, you will learn about processing information, especially about how you can use that information to advise clients on how to improve communications. That knowledge is useful for making signage or advertising more effective, for example, or for making products more user-friendly.
Students also learn to come up with solutions for a wide range of problems that can occur in professional practice. Humans are dramatically changing their environment using increasingly complex technology, such as the Internet, social media, robotics and automation. In order to design a living environment that is well suited to human cognitive abilities, we must have a good understanding of how humans process knowledge and their skill at applying it.
This Master’s programme is internationally oriented, from the literature used in class to the opportunity to do an internship and write a thesis abroad, and from the option of attending electives at foreign universities to participating in international summer schools, research conferences or workshops.
Both our lecturers and our students have very diverse backgrounds. During the study programme, you will spend a lot of time learning to work in multi-disciplinary teams. Accurate and careful communication is vital to that process.
Once you have completed the Master’s programme, you will be a true academic professional who can apply scientific knowledge in day-to-day practice, such as acting as an independent consultant on ergonomic problems. As a member of an interdisciplinary team, you will contribute to solving these problems together with designers, policy makers, technicians, computer scientists and business experts. You can also advise on the sensory aspects of marketing communications. As a person with a Master’s degree, you will also have developed excellent verbal and written communication skills to communicate with all sorts of audiences.
Better education and training for all are of the utmost importance when it comes to developing our society. In this Master’s programme, you will learn to develop, evaluate and improve learning processes and learning environments from a variety of theoretical perspectives. You will do so by means of state-of-the-art methods and approaches in several different contexts; from a classroom setting to the non-profit and commercial sectors, and with a focus on people in all phases of life. This means that the person doing the learning may be a pupil, student or employee, but also a lecturer, educator or trainer, depending on the context. During the study programme, you will learn to optimise learning environments so that they meet the needs of the learners themselves and of society as a whole.
During the programme you will master an academic educational scientific and systematic approach. You will acquire and further develop theoretical knowledge of:
Read more about these characteristics under ‘Why in Utrecht?’
This Master’s programme is offered in a full-time variant (average of 40 hours of study per week) or a part-time variant (average of 20 hours of study per week).
