Students can specialise in:

1. Archival and Information Studies
2. Cultural Data & AI
3. Film Studies
4. New Media and Digital Culture
5. Global Cross-Media Cultures

There is also the option to develop, in consultation with the programme director, a fully customised programme that straddles these disciplines and potentially includes a semester abroad.

Research Master's specialisations

• Archival and Information Studies is positioned at the intersection of information, technology, and people. It focuses on digital scientific and cultural heritage in libraries, archives and museums as well as alternative sources emerging on the (social) Web, and how these changes fundamentally affect our concept of “information.”
• Cultural Data & AI prepares you for work in the media industries, the cultural heritage sector and public government sectors by teaching you essential computational techniques, in tandem with the necessary critical reflection that accompanies these techniques and their consequences.
• Film Studies offers a theoretically rigorous engagement with the field of film studies and visual culture. The programme approaches the study of film as a multi-faceted phenomenon, one that plays a vital and ever-changing role in contemporary digital media culture.
• New Media and Digital Culture provides a comprehensive and critical approach to new media research, practices and theory. The study of digital media is continually refreshed with objects, spaces, platforms and apps, each seeking new users and niches: Snapchat, Medium, Tinder and Instagram operate alongside formerly ‘new’ media giants such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. Students gain in-depth knowledge in how to theorise such digital media objects and environments by learning to historically situate them in such perspectives as platform capitalism, data infrastructures, algorithmic governmentality, information analytics, interface critique and software studies.
• Global Cross-Media Cultures offers the tools to understand and evaluate the on-going transformation of media culture, and its impact on culture, politics and everyday life. It also takes television as a starting point in mapping the conceptual, social and cultural challenges that come with digital, mobile and social media.

Media Studies programme structure

The Research Master's programme Media Studies comprises 120 ECTS credits: 30 credits for your Specialisation (first semester); 60 credits for core courses, electives, tutorials, summer & winter schools (second and third semester), and 30 credits for your Research Master's thesis project (fourth semester).

Internships and studying abroad

You have the possibility of doing an internship or spending a semester of the Research Master's abroad.

Credit transfer

Students who show exceptional promise during a regular or professional Master's programme are encouraged to continue their studies in the Research Master's programme. Once students are admitted to this programme, they can transfer credits earned during their previous course of study towards their Research Master's degree. The Examinations Board determines which courses qualify for transfer.