Enrichment projects and courses
You have many different options to choose further courses and participate in projects that deepen and broaden your study programme. You can also choose to study abroad for a semester.
Student-led Honours Seminar
The Honours Seminar course allows you to design your own course and steer your own learning. You work together in small groups of about six to ten students, inviting experts in the field to come and talk with you on your topic, and you read and write extensively on it. You have a topic supervisor from University College Utrecht assigned to your group for consultation, but you are the ones in charge.
The Student-Led Honours Course fully overhauled my expectations of the academics. We learned not to be afraid of what we did not know yet.
UCU Cultural Heritage Programme (CHIP)
Learn about heritage from the various perspectives of the arts, the social sciences and the sciences. The programme brings students in contact with cultural institutions, where they gain experience of and can contribute to managing, preserving, researching, and exhibiting cultural heritage.
UCU in East Africa
The UCU East Africa programme aims to introduce students to a host of theories and issues relevant to global political economy studies, critical development studies and African studies. The programme also adopts a ‘transformative learning’ approach, seeking to challenge popular stereotypes, assumptions and biases about ‘Africa’ and ‘development’ and hoping to foster new perspectives, lateral thinking and critical self-reflection.
In the course of the programme, the students were confronted with tough questions about difference and diversity. They came to question their own assumptions, prejudices and biases.
Field Research Aruba
After completing a preparatory summer course in Utrecht, participating students develop a project plan within their own area of interest, for carrying out on-site in Aruba in collaboration with students from the University of Aruba and local stakeholders. Students apply their research skills to a project with societal value, engage in cultural and intellectual exchange with members of the Aruban community, and make the transition from student to independent researcher.
The field research in collaboration with the local community made me aware that there is a whole world outside of academic literature, and that that world is just as knowledgeable if not more so than academia.
The SPOTLIGHT Scholarship Blog
The SPOTLIGHT Scholarship Blog is a digital space where students and faculty members of the Law, Politics, and History tracks can post their academic work. We especially encourage interdisciplinary pieces that connect with the aforementioned tracks. Our publications include opinion editorials, academic articles, and thesis summaries, which are published on a monthly basis.
Research Assistantships
University College Utrecht offers Research Assistantships, that enables students to receive academic credits for serving as assistants to faculty members who are conducting pre-existing research projects (e.g. preparing work for publication or a conference). This collaboration will result in a meaningful experience for the student that introduces them to and gives them grounding in the ethos and mechanics of research and publication.