Dr G.J. Somsen

Geert Somsen is Director of Studies of the MA ESST. He is currently only involved in the courses "Imagining Europe" (BA ES and UCM) and "Introduction to STS" (MA ESST) -- besides giving lectures and skills trainings in "Othering Europe", "Knowledge and Criticism", "Finding Sources" (BA AC), "Europe and the Global South" (MA ES), "Interpreting the History of Science and Technology", (MA ESST), "Science in Action" (MSC), "Science, Power and the Construction of Facts" (UCM), "Global Connections: non-Eurocentric historical narratives" (MA GDS), "Entering the Field" (MPhil CAST), and several PhD training programs.

Somsen has ample educational experience. He has designed 25 courses and taught some 60. Classes have varied in terms of level (BA to PhD), size (2 to 300 students), form (lecture, seminar, skills, digital), and content (history of science to politcal history, art history to STS). Somsen has taught in programs in and outside of FASoS, and also (mainly for PhD students) at Columbia University, Moscow's National Research University, the ETH Zurich, Uppsala Universitet, and the universities of Leiden, Utrecht, and Twente.

Somsen has directed BA and MA programs, and has been PhD Training Coordinator at the Netherlands Graduate Research School for Science, Technology and Modern Culture (WTMC). He was the first Academic Coordinator of Maastricht's Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences. Somsen has also given several courses for lay audiences, including Studium Generale lecture series.

At Maastricht University, most teaching is collaborative, interdisciplinary, and in English, All courses use the small-scale, student-centred Problem Based Learning method.