3 things about GD

Before you send in your application, we really would like you to consider the following three important points about our Global Development programme - just to make sure, that we really are what you are looking for.

1. We love data and methods. We are a research based programme and this also affects our teaching. We have a very strong focus on data and methods. We will make you gather your own data and we will ask you to analyze it. This goes for quantitative as well as qualitative. We expect you to have a good command of one or more social science methods when you start and we will challenge you to learn new ones. We are looking for qual-people who are not afraid of numbers and quant-people who are not afraid of people.

2. We are a “hands-on” programme. This in no way means that we buy into whatever mainstream development ideas are out there. But it does mean that faced with a problem we much prefer to be practical, get some data, analyze it, look at existing solutions, come up with new ones and then, based on our own research and findings, get into the critical discussion. We are not the programme where you get to spend the majority of the time debating development from a critical theory point of view. Others do that way better than us.

3. We ask a lot of you. In particular for the first semester. We ask for a big chunk of your time and dedication, we ask you to study hard alone and with your group, we ask you to engage and be open minded. And it will be hard work. At times you will find it too much – just like pretty much all successful students before you did.
In return we will do our best to give you our best. We have a highly dedicated and competent faculty which takes pride in including the students in the on-going alterations we make to the programme. As a GD student you are encouraged to help us make the programme better than ever before.