Thesis Seminar introduction meeting
On May 8, 2019 from 11.00-13.00 there will be a general introduction meeting about the thesis seminars. The meeting will take place in room 1A15 at PDLC. The coordinator and instructors of the thesis seminars will explain and discuss the general thesis seminar procedures and expectations and students can ask questions about the thesis seminars. If you want to be prepared for next semester, please mark this date in your agenda!
Registration for the Thesis Seminar of your specialisation will be taken care of by the SSC in August.
Master Thesis Seminar - : Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Development (Fall)
State, Identity, Nation
‘Identity’ is a concept that is increasingly important in the study of politics, especially in the context of states and nations. With an ongoing refugee crisis, the insecurity of Europe for the upcoming after Brexit ear, nationalism rising in former communist countries and even the increasingly supplementary digital identities and the debate on multiculturalism highlights the importance and relevance of studying identities. Beyond the sense of belonging to a group of people with whom you share a e.g. common language, common traditions and customs, identities are important to understand as it also affects the way communicate with others. This seminar will introduce and discuss theories, ideologies and/or ideas of nation, state and identity and combine these with themes that are directly or indirectly related to these concepts and additionally builds on a variety of theories and approaches in the social sciences, including ideational theories and interpretative methods.
This thesis seminar welcomes projects, among others, on the construction of political identities, the notion of national identities (including memory, oblivion, language and religion) and the idea of ‘the other’ (external and internal), the cultural and emotional depth of identities to politics, approaches on the role of media and the formation of identities, Europe and the Nation State but also economic and social crisis and the rise of the ‘national’. From political to national and citizen identities the seminar aims to examine and analyse the diffusion of identities in modern societies.