The backbone of the Research Master's in Religious Studies is made up by four core courses, to be taken in the first three semesters of the programme: 

• The first core course, Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion, introduces you to important debates about the core concepts and methodologies in the field of religious studies with an emphasis on new paradigms and approaches in this field. 
• The second core course, Religious Experience, emphasises the specific debate about the analytical value of the concept of experience in religious scholarship and introduces various types of research concerning the topic of religion and experience. 
• The third core course, Nature and the Supernatural, addresses the notions of nature and the supernatural that have been fundamental to human culture since antiquity. The course introduces you to cosmogenesis, ideas of nature, myths of creation, accounts of the origin of the world and a diversity of ideas concerning intermediary beings from a variety of religious cultures in a comparative perspective. 
• The core course titled Current Issues in Religious Studies is offered as a year-long module that brings you in contact with the research topics of the current research projects of UvA staff, guest lecturers and PhD students.

You can tailor the Research Master's programme to your own interests by selecting electives from the one-year Master’s programme in Spirituality and Religion and its specialisations Esotericism and Spirituality in Western Culture; Islam: Religion and Spirituality; and Religion and Spirituality in Contemporary Societies.

In a tutorial setting, you will work closely with one of our staff members. You will be encouraged to propose your own tutorial and benefit from the support of one of our specialists in order to, among others, delve deeper into a particular corpus of literature, familiarise yourself with particular research methods, prepare posters or papers for conferences or write papers or book reviews intended for publication in academic journals. In addition, you will also participate in seminars at one of the national research schools, where you will meet Research Master’s students, PhD students and researchers from other universities.

To complete the Research Master’s programme, you will conduct an extended Thesis Research Project in the final semester of the second year, which is reported on in the Research Master’s Thesis. This research and its report are carried out under the supervision of an academic staff member involved in the programme. The subject of this research must be mutually agreed upon by the student and the academic supervisor. An accompanying  thesis seminar will sustain you in finalising your thesis programme.