Prospectus

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Beyond Discipline and Place in the Social Sciences and the Humanities

Course
2024-2025

Admission Requirements

  • The course is specifically designed for PhD candidates and Research MA students registered at LeidenGlobal partner institutions, but students from other institutions are also eligible to attend. All students should first consult with their advisors before applying.

  • New incoming students of the ResMA Asian Studies or the ResMA Middle Eastern Studies are advised to discuss their participation with the student advisor, if they are interested as they will not have been assigned a supervisor yet by September 1st.

  • Please register before 12:00 PM on Monday the 9th of September 2024. Applicants will learn of their admission status no later than Friday September 13th, 2024 and receive the programme and literature. Admission is at the discretion of the LeidenGlobal executive committee.

Description

‘Beyond Discipline and Place in the Social Sciences and the Humanities': Developing Our Scholarly Craft’ is an interdisciplinary series of lectures and seminar discussions open in the fall of each year to PhD candidates and Research MA students at Dutch Universities and LeidenGlobal partner institutions.
It offers advanced research students insight into the process of developing the scholarly craft through conversations with experienced scholars working in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (including Archaeology and Law). In sharing their experiences in research, teaching, and public engagement, they will reflect on their socio-political position as researchers in relation to their research, and explore choices of discipline and place along their career path.
Across the semester students will locate their own emerging research projects in relation to disciplinary conventions, with attention to researchers’ positionality and ethical practice. They will work to recognize their strengths and challenges as young scholars, considering how to build on the former and contend with the latter.

Course objectives

The series aims to stimulate conversations and collaborations across disciplinary and societal divides, in line with developments in scholarship worldwide. Ideally, students will participate in this course early on in their scholarly training, but applications by students at all stages of their research careers are welcome.
A complementary seminar series entitled “Methodologies in the Social Sciences and Humanities” is offered in the Spring.

Timetable

Mondays 16:15-17:45, from mid September 2024 till mid December 2024, at Lipsius Building

Mode of instruction

  • The course will be coordinated and moderated by Dr Noa Schonmann.

  • The series will bring scholars to present their disciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research projects. Guest lecturers will discuss their research project in its disciplinary context, addressing issues of theory and practice.

  • Speakers assign an article as preparatory reading (available through open access or the Leiden University digital library), accompanied by one or several questions for students to bear in mind while reading, and one or several propositions for structuring in-class discussion. Assignments are selected for (i) relevance to the speaker’s own research, (ii) relevance to the central questions of this course, (iii) significance, and (iv) accessibility to a student audience of widely varying background and specialization. Rather than highly specialized studies, these are big-picture texts that speak to the development of the field in question at large, even if they do so through case study material. Speakers may engage with these texts in class, and/or use them as starting points for taking the discussion further. They will lecture for 30 minutes, and then moderate a discussion among the students.

  • During the course, students will work towards a ‘think piece’ (2,000 words) written for their supervisors, in which they reflect upon the course: what they have learned from it; how they responded to it; the issues it addressed; any questions it brought up for them in terms of their own research, etc. The final session will include a discussion of key points from these draft papers. Once they are finalized, students discuss the papers with their supervisors. Whether or not this is considered creditable is up to the student’s home institute / faculty and their individual supervisors.

  • Students are expected to attend all sessions. Incidental exemptions may be requested from the course convener.

Assessment method

During the course, students will work towards a ‘think piece’ (2,000 words) written for their supervisors, in which they reflect upon the course. The final session will include a discussion of key points from these draft papers. No grade or credits will be given.

Reading list

Speakers assign an article as preparatory reading (available through open access or the Leiden University digital library).

Registration

Please register before 12:00 PM on Monday 9th of September 2024. Applicants will learn of their admission status no later than 13th of September 2024 and receive the programme and literature. Admission is at the discretion of the LeidenGlobal executive committee.

Registration Studeren à la carte en Contractonderwijs

Not applicable.

Contact

  • For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the information bar on the right.

  • For questions about registration, contact LeidenGlobal.

Remarks

LeidenGlobal is a collaborative effort by the following academic and cultural institutions:

  • Leiden University

  • African Studies Center Leiden (ASC)

  • International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS)

  • Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO)

  • Royal Institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV)

  • National Museum of Antiquities (RMO)

  • Wereldmuseum Leiden (WML)

Jointly, the expertise of the scholars associated with these institutions extends to many parts of the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, North America, and Russia and the Caucasus, through fields of enquiry and themes ranging from archeology to international relations, and from temple iconography to new media. As such, Leiden offers a truly global perspective.

LeidenGlobal aims to raise the visibility and the impact of academic and cultural scholarship and events for a wider audience, and to build partnerships with the media, government, the corporate sector, and NGOs; and to strengthen local collaboration in scholarly endeavors such as grant applications and graduate training.