More Info
Structure
Programme structure (1st year)
Semester 1
The EPS Programme is a two-year Master’s Programme divided into four semesters. Like all students you will spend your first semester in Prague. Before the beginning of the first semester, you participate in the Prague Introductory week, where you meet the academic coordinators and faculty staff. The first semester serves as an introduction to the programme so you enrol only in compulsory courses. It is based mainly on methodology and an introduction to the main challenges faced by Europe today as well as the key academic disciplines relevant to their understanding. At the end of the first semester, you choose the topic of your Master’s thesis with the assistance of academic coordinators from Charles University. In their first semester, students will also travel to Brussels, for the Brussels field trip, a 2-day event to meet experts from EU institutions.
Semester 2
For the second semester, you will have two options: Leiden or Krakow. This semester also contains a number of compulsory courses that cover different areas of EU studies. In addition, you can prepare for your own specialization by choosing from a range of facultative courses and language training. At the beginning of the second semester, second year students participate in a two-day Barcelona Research Seminar. First year students participate in an online one-day Research Seminar towards the end of their second semester. Each event gives students the opportunity to present their research, whether preliminary in the case of first year students or more developed in the case of the second year students. All students receive feedback from their peers and academic experts. In addition, experts in research design deliver guest lectures to talk students through the methodological issues associated with their own research.
Programme structure (2nd year)
For the second year of the EPS Programme, students may choose among all the universities that constitute the EPS consortium: Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic), Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland), Leiden University (Netherlands) and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona (Spain). Their choice of preferences must already be specified in their application before they enter the programme and students cannot remain at the university of their second semester of study.
Semester 3 and 4
During the two final semesters, you will have a wide choice of facultative courses that reflect the added value of each member of the consortium – areas of academic expertise of these universities in terms of course offerings and research. These fields are the following: Traditions and Future of a Multilevel Europe (Prague), Policymaking in the EU (Barcelona), Centre and Periphery (Krakow) and Europe in the International Environment (Leiden). If you take your second year in Leiden, Prague or Krakow there is an obligatory internship of 15 ECTS with an international organization or company. Barcelona has a more scientific specialization and you concentrate on research skills.
Students studying at Leiden, Prague or Krakow should work on their thesis throughout the final year of study. In the cases of Prague and Krakow, students attend MA thesis seminars both semesters and work closely both with the MA thesis seminar teacher and their academic supervisor. In Leiden, students work with the academic supervisor. Thanks to the partnership with the Europaeum, students can submit a proposal to present their research and/or serve as a discussant at the Oxford Spring School, which takes place in the second semester of the second year. Selected second year students will travel to Oxford to participate in this unique student event and academic experience.
Course Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Master thesis and requirements for graduation
The MA thesis is an extended piece of original academic writing, which students are required to deliver to complete their studies.
The thesis production process starts in the first semester when students first propose their topic in the course Qualitative Methods in Social Sciences. After receiving feedback on this preliminary proposal, students reformulate the proposal as part of preparation for presenting at the online Research Seminar. During the second semester, students continue working on the MA thesis proposal as a part of methodological courses at Jagiellonian University and Leiden University.
During the second year, MA thesis seminars and/or consultation with the academic supervisor are designed to help students with the research progress. In January, students will receive feedback from peers and EPS academics at the Barcelona Research Seminar. Thesis supervision arrangements may differ depending on the partner university at which the student is writing it.
The thesis deadline for submission is usually in mid-June of the final year of study. For those who defend the MA thesis at Charles University, Jagiellonian University or Leiden University, the thesis is required to be 20,000 words (± 10 %). For those at Pompeu Fabra University, the thesis should be constituted of 40 pages (12,000 words ± 10 %). All students undertake an oral defence of their thesis. Before that, it is independently assessed by the academic supervisor and by the second reviewer, an academic from a different partner university than the student’s final year of study.
In total, students are required to have 120 ECTS for graduation.
Career Preparation
Career Preparation in the MA European Politics and Society
The programme
How can you use the knowledge and the skills that you acquire during the MA European Politics and Society? What skills do you already have, and what further skills do you still want to learn? How do you translate the courses that you choose into something that you’d like to do after graduation?
These questions and more will be discussed at various times during your study programme. You may already have spoken about them with your study coordinator, the Humanities Career Service or other students, or made use of the Leiden University Career Zone. Many different activities are organised to help you reflect on your own wishes and options, and give you the chance to explore the job market. All these activities are focused on the questions: ‘What can I do?’, ‘What do I want?’ and ‘How do I achieve my goals?’.
Activities
You will be notified via the Faculty website, your study programme website and email about further activities in the area of job market preparation. The following activities will help you to thoroughly explore your options, so we advise you to take careful note of them:
Transferable skills
Future employers are interested not only in the subject-related knowledge that you acquired during your study programme, but also in the ‘transferable skills’. These include cognitive skills, such as critical thinking, reasoning and argumentation and innovation; intrapersonal skills, such as flexibility, initiative, appreciating diversity and metacognition; and interpersonal skills, such as communication, accountability and conflict resolution. In short, they are skills that all professionals need in order to perform well.
It is therefore important that during your study programme you not only acquire as much knowledge as possible about your subject, but also are aware of the skills you have gained and the further skills you still want to learn. The course descriptions in the e-Prospectus of the MA European Politics and Society include, in addition to the courses’ learning objectives, a list of the skills that they aim to develop.
The skills you may encounter in the various courses are:
Collaboration
Persuasion
Research
Self-directed learning
Creative thinking
Courses of the MA European Politics and Society
Courses of the study programme obviously help to prepare you for the job market. As a study programme, we aim to cover this topic either directly or less directly in each semester.
Contact
If you have any questions about career choices, whether in your studies or on the job market, you are welcome to make an appointment with the career adviser of the the Humanities Career Service 071-5272235, or with your coordinator of studies
