October 2010
Research master's "Sociology and Social Research" at the Department of
Sociology/ICS, Utrecht University
The Department of Sociology and the Interuniversity Center for Social
Science Theory and Methodology (ICS) at Utrecht University offer a
two-year research master's program "Sociology and Social Research" that
is completely taught in English. Rather than being a "track" in a
broader program in the behavioral and social sciences, this is the only
specialized research master's …
[View More]program in sociology in the Netherlands.
The research master's program has a clear profile, offering structured
and systematic training in theoretically and methodologically advanced
research in sociology and the social sciences in general. Special
features of the program include:
- A problem-driven approach with a substantive focus on topics such as
social networks and social capital, social integration, stratification
and inequality, households, organizations.
- A strong focus on the integration of social theory, empirical
research, and methods of data-analysis.
- In various courses, students gain extensive hands on experience in
state of the art social science data analysis.
- Students gain hands on experience in writing a publishable research
article in English: the master's thesis that completes the program is
written in the format of a publishable research article. In fact, many
students do indeed submit their thesis or a revised and adapted version
of their thesis to a journal and quite some of these submissions are
accepted for publication. Meanwhile, research articles that have
developed from master's theses of the program have appeared in or are
accepted for publication in journals like Social Forces, Social
Networks, Journal of Marriage and the Family, European Union Politics,
and others. Students regularly present their master's thesis at
international conferences outside the Netherlands. Quite some students
meanwhile gained prizes and awards for their theses.
- The program comprises a master class taught by an outstanding visiting
professor from abroad. Previous visiting professors include Andreas
Diekmann, ETH Zurich; Hartmut Esser, Mannheim; Frank Kalter,
Leipzig/Mannheim; Hans-Peter Blossfeld, Bamberg; Ted Mouw, North
Carolina, and Walter Muller, Mannheim. Furthermore, Sociology and Social
Research students themselves organize a mini-conference on their own
research projects at the end of the first or the beginning of the second
year of the program. Students are strongly encouraged to participate in
summer schools like Essex or Ljubljana in the summer period between the
first and the second year of the program.
The quality of the program can be inferred, among other things, from
numerous and consistently very favorable external evaluations of
research and teaching in Sociology at Utrecht University and the ICS. In
2010, the Accreditation Organization of the Netherlands and Flanders
(Nederlands-Vlaamse Accreditatieorganisatie: NVAO), the authoritative
agency for assessing and accrediting higher education programs in the
Netherlands, supported by an Advisory Committee of the Royal Netherlands
Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), has concluded the evaluation and
re-accreditation of the Sociology and Social Research program. The
results qualify the program as the currently best research master's
program in the Netherlands across al disciplines in the social and
behavioral sciences. Sociology at Utrecht University is repeatedly
ranked highest and obtains excellent scores in the authoritative
comparative assessments of Dutch research programs in sociology that are
carried out regularly under the auspices of the Quality Assurance
Department of the Association of Dutch Universities, including the most
recent 2009 Research Assessment Sociology. Another well-known annual
ranking, widely used by incoming students, is provided by the Dutch
weekly ELSEVIER and includes field-specific rankings based on a survey
among all full professors and associate professors in the particular
field in the Netherlands. In the most recent ELSEVIER survey (published
in October 2010), Utrecht has been chosen by a wide margin as the
overall best Sociology Department in the Netherlands and also as the
Department with the best master's program, the best teachers in
Sociology, and the best publication record. Utrecht has likewise been
chosen as the overall best Sociology Department in the two previous
ELSEVIER surveys 2009 and 2008.
Students in the program benefit from intensive supervision. Instructors
involved in teaching the program and supervising students include
prominent researcher from the Department of Sociology and the ICS such
as Vincent Buskens, Henk Flap, Tanja van der Lippe, Ineke Maas, Paul
Nieuwbeerta, Anne-Rigt Poortman, Werner Raub, Rene Torenvlied, Frank van
Tubergen, Beate Volker, Jeroen Weesie, and others. Students likewise
benefit from much interaction and collaboration in a relatively small
group of peers.
Drop out rates from the program are very low. Almost all students
entering the program do complete it in due time within two years.
The profile of the program ensures that the labor market position of
alumni is excellent: students who have completed the program are very
successful in acquiring subsequent positions as PhD students at the ICS
or elsewhere in and outside the Netherlands, as researchers in
institutes and organizations outside the university system, as trainees,
etc.
"Sociology and Social Research" is part of the integrated graduate
training program of the ICS that likewise comprises research master's
programs at the universities of Groningen and Nijmegen and a jointly
taught PhD program. Students can thus attend selected courses in
Groningen and are well-prepared, for example, for an application for a
position as PhD student at the ICS after having completed "Sociology and
Social Research".
The target group of students consists of promising students with a
Bachelor's degree or an equivalent period of at least three years of
undergraduate study and qualifications that justify the expectation of
successful completion of the program in due time. This includes students
with a BA Sociology or Social Sciences, broadly conceived and including
Economics, Political Sciences, Public Administration, Demography, and
(Social) Psychology. While the program is designed for students with
above-average grades, motivation of students and affinity with the
program have proven to be important. Quite some students with good but
clearly less than excellent grades from previous studies have entered
and enjoyed the program and have completed it with very good results,
due to a clearly structured curriculum, sound supervision, and
interaction and collaboration with peers. Applicants with deficiencies
in methods and statistics can be admitted conditional upon participation
in a methods and statistics summer course right before the start of the
first year of the program that is offered specifically for incoming
research master's students by the Graduate School of Social and
Behavioral Sciences of Utrecht University.
Students from outside the Netherlands are explicitly encouraged to apply
and can easily follow the program since it is taught in English. About
50% of the students are from outside the Netherlands, up to now
including students from Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, various countries
in Central and Eastern Europe as well as students from, e.g., China,
Israel, Taiwan, and Turkey. Admission to the program is selective.
"Sociology and Social Research" is one of Utrecht University's Prestige
master's programs and thus benefits from special funds of Utrecht
University. Some teaching and research assistantships are available for
students. Also, funding is available for participation in summer schools
outside the Netherlands (for example, Essex, Ljubljana, and Ann Arbor).
Each year, a new group of students enters the program. We are currently
searching for talented candidates for the academic year 2011/2012.
Courses for this group will start on September 1, 2011. The DEADLINES
FOR APPLICATIONS for the academic year 2011/2012 are December 1, 2010
(early bird deadline) and March 1, 2011. The number of new students per
year is limited to 15-20.
Detailed information on the program, including courses taught, is
available at
www.uu.nl/programmes/sasr
Information about the Department of Sociology of Utrecht University is
available at
www.fss.uu.nl/sociology
Please use
gs.sbs(a)uu.nl
for any inquiries about the program and about admission procedures.
Please don't hesitate to draw the attention of talented students to the
program. Also, please don't hesitate to forward this message to other
colleagues who might wish to inform students on the program.
Kind regards,
Werner Raub
Coordinator research master's program "Sociology and Social Research"
Werner Raub | Department of Sociology/ICS | Utrecht University |
Heidelberglaan 2 | 3584 CS Utrecht | Netherlands | phone +31-(0)30-253
2101 | w.raub(a)uu.nl | www.fss.uu.nl/soc/raub | www.fss.uu.nl/sociology |
www.fss.uu.nl/soc/iscore | Sociology and Social Research
www.uu.nl/programmes/sasr
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* Apologies for any cross posting *
* REMINDER *
* Deadline for submissions is approaching *
Dear colleagues,
please find attached a CFP for the 2nd European User Conference (March,
31 - April, 1, 2011) in Mannheim..
The 2nd European User Conference for EU-LFS and EU-SILC, organized by
the German Microdata Lab, GESIS, in cooperation with Eurostat,
will provide researchers with the opportunity to present and …
[View More]discuss
their work. In addition to fostering the discussion within the research
community on both substantive and methodological issues,
the conference offers researchers the opportunity to give feedback to
the European Statistical System.
Given that the legal bases for EU-LFS and EU-SILC will be revised in the
near future the conference offers the unique possibility to discuss
needs and wants of the research community with Eurostat.
Researchers of all disciplines (e.g. economics, demography, geography,
political science, public health and sociology) who use either EU-LFS or
EU-SILC micro data are encouraged to participate and to submit an
abstract. Substantive topics may include, among others, all aspects of
the European labour market, living conditions, migration,
income inequalities, poverty and social exclusion. Methodological topics
may include e.g. questions of data quality, cross-national and
inter-temporal comparability, and statistical modeling.
All presentations must be comparative and include data from at least two
countries.
SUBMISSIONS:
The deadline for submissions of abstracts is October 31, 2010. Please
send your submission to the local organizers of the conference:
Christof Wolf (Christof.Wolf(a)gesis.org) and Heike Wirth
(Heike.Wirth(a)gesis.org).
Abstracts should not be longer than 1000 words; the abstract should be
informative, indicate the dataset(s) used and the countries analyzed.
The submitters will be notified by January 15, 2011, whether their paper
was accepted for presentation or not.
For any further questions please contact the local organizers and visit
the conference webpage at
http://www.gesis.org/forschung-lehre/veranstaltungen/konferenzen/european-u…
Maybe you are also interested in some eu-silc-tools:
http://www.gesis.org/dienstleistungen/daten/amtliche-mikrodaten/european-mi…
kind regards
heike wirth
--
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Dr. Heike Wirth
GESIS - Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften
German Microdata Lab
Postfach 12 21 55
D-68072 Mannheim
Tel.: +49 621 1246 269
Fax : +49 621 1246 100
Email: heike.wirth(a)gesis.org
http://www.gesis.org/
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