Department of Political Science

Making sense of today’s world - with its very fragile balances - is a challenge. Finding resilient solutions at the political and administrative level to those (foreseen and unforeseen) transformative breaks of balance is an even harder task. The researchers and teaching fellows of the department of Political Science embrace this challenge, providing political science and public administration-related knowledge to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

The diverse background of our staff - in political science, public administration, international relations, sociology, and philosophy - allows us to work creatively everyday towards finding those answers and solutions in diverse policy fields such as energy, climate, migration, foreign security, cyber, EU external relations, health and monetary policy. Focusing on both theory and practice, political and administrative processes are conceptualised, analysed, and compared - at both the national and international levels, with a specific interest in European and global politics.

Teaching

Our objective is to guide the FASoS students to thinking critically and creatively about contemporary political challenges - and be leading actors in making sense of them, ultimately contributing to find those resilient solutions.

The staff of the Department of Political Science contributes to the following programmes :

BA European Studies
BA Arts and Culture
BA Digital Society
BSc Global Studies
Master European Studies
Research Master European Studies
Master European Public Affairs (in cooperation with the European Institute for Public Administration)
Master Public Policy and Human Development (in cooperation with the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance)

Research

The Department of Political Science is a member of the Dutch/Flemish research school Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG), the scholarly associations European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) and University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES). Within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, our staff participates in the research programmes Politics and Culture in Europe (PCE), and Globalisation, Transnationalism, and Development (GTD).

Our researchers are an active part of contemporary European and international debates, presenting their current work both within and outside the faculty. Their engagement with the society at large - from local news, to citizens’ panels and students’ initiatives - makes our research community vibrant and dynamic.

To know more about our department and current research projects, please contact Head of Department Prof. Dr. Esther Versluis