• The program is designed to equip the next generation of humanities researchers with the tools to design innovative, imaginative research across disciplines. In close collaboration with highly acclaimed research groups, students will develop techniques to connect their research with current societal challenges and to communicate the results to a broad audience. students will benefit from the extensive network VU’s teams have built up with heritage institutions, research institutes, NGOs, and business partners, for internships and embedded research projects.
  • The Critical Studies in Art and Culture track focuses on current developments within four main disciplines – visual arts, architecture, design, and media – from both a theoretical and a historical perspective. In a globalized cultural world in which art, architecture, design, and media are ever more closely integrated and packaged as ‘creative industries’, disciplinary boundaries are called into question and challenged. But a thorough grounding in older and newer disciplines such as art history, architectural history, design culture, and media studies is a prerequisite for asking these questions.
  • In the student's study program, students will focus on the analysis of visual objects: artifacts in various media that function (primarily or in part) as images. This ranges from landscapes, cities, and buildings to artworks in various media, as well as film, television, design, and games. Notions such as inter-, cross- and transmediality play an important role. Since artifacts, media, and forms of intermediality can only exist in specific social, institutional, economical, and ideological contexts and networks, Critical Studies in Art and Culture will equip students with the analytical and critical tools necessary for analyzing these. Each of the four main disciplines brings specific theories and methods to the table, and the program seeks to highlight their interconnectedness, with reference to their specific potential as well as their possible limitations.
  • As a student of Critical Studies in Art and Culture, students will be joining a highly dedicated international group of students, alumni, Ph.D. candidates, and staff members from various disciplinary backgrounds, who share a strong interest in the cultural sector. Within and beyond the program, students will meet artists and researchers from around the world, exchange ideas about their research during our informal brunches, and visit exhibitions and cultural events. Many of our students and alumni are active with the VU Amsterdam-affiliated journal Kunstlicht. Furthermore, both the Graduate School and our Interdisciplinary Research Institutes CLUE+ (Research Institute for Culture, Cognition, History, and Heritage) and the Network Institute offer a broad range of workshops, seminars, lectures, and research groups to attend.