Universiteit Leiden

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Programme

The FSW Honours College programme consists of 30 EC in addition to your regular bachelor’s degree programme.

In the first year you take part in the ‘Social Science Lab’. This course is designed to prepare you as an expert who is able to participate in designing an effective, innovative, and feasible intervention for an urgent societal problem, and present it to stakeholders. For this, you will collaborate with fellow social scientists, with input from other academics, policymakers, and representatives of pressure groups.

During the course you get acquainted with the main themes of the Science, Society and Self track: 

  1. Sustainability and Health 
  2. Adults and Children in a Polarising World 
  3. Human Aspects of Digitalisation and Robotisation

Another important aspect is community building, and connecting with your fellow students within the track as well as your coach.

In year 2 you continue to work on your personal and professional development, by exploring your personal motives and mission related to your competences and skills. Greater awareness can help you improve in these areas. 

In addition, you choose at least one 4-EC elective given by the FSW Honours College (i.e., FSW Honours Elective Module):

  • Adults and Children in a Polarising World
  • Robots & Artificial Intelligence
  • Juvenile Delinquency: Prevention and Repression
  • Philosophical Considerations: Human Nature and Moral Progress
  • Sustainability and Health

You can choose to do a societal internship in your chosen area, or learn more about scientific research in a research internship. It is also possible to choose an elective from your own or another academic discipline, or a course from Leiden University College (LUC). Another possibility for your second year is to do an Honours Class organised by the Honours Academy (more about this below). Overall, you can structure the second and third year according to your study plan. Your coach will help you with this.

It is also possible to join Science, Society and Self from your second year onwards. In that case, you take 15 EC in your second year and 15 EC in your third year.

Graduation ceremony

In year 3 you continue to work on your personal and professional development, by looking at how your current state of personal and interpersonal competences relates to your motives, passion, and mission.

You could take an Honours Class, choosing from the wide range of interdisciplinary modules outside your own bachelor’s degree programme. This is possible even if you have already taken an Honours Class in your second year: there are plenty to choose from! You must take at least one Honours Class throughout the whole programme, but may take up to three.

You can also take an FSW Honours Elective Module (see list above). Here too it does not matter if you have already taken an Elective in your second year.

The Honours Programme concludes with a wrap-up course and finally the Honours Conference, where you present the knowledge you have acquired. 

You can also combine the Honours College with studying abroad in your third year. Sometimes you can take an extra course abroad to meet your Honours EC requirements. If your exchange programme does not allow that, you can take a summer school or do an internship during the summer. Alternatively, you could decide to take more EC in the second year.  

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