Core courses

In the first year, you build the theoretical, methodological, and regional foundation for your own research. Together with students from the Research MA Asian Studies, you follow two shared core courses:

• Critical Area Studies: Placing Your Research – This course introduces key theories and debates in Area Studies. It helps you think critically about how knowledge about regions, cultures, languages, and societies is produced, and how your own research can be positioned within wider academic conversations.
• Methodology in the Social Sciences and Humanities -  This course explores a range of methods used across the humanities and social sciences. It helps you think carefully about how research questions, sources, methods, and ethics connect.

Electives

In addition to the core courses, you choose core electives and electives. These may be specific to Middle Eastern Studies, but you can also combine them with courses from other Research MA programmes, or national Research Schools.

You may focus on a particular region, such as the Arab world, North Africa, Turkey, Iran, or the Persianate world, or on a discipline or theme such as history, politics, literature, language, religion, media, anthropology, political thought, ecology, or colonial and postcolonial studies.

Depending on the courses offered in a given year, students may explore themes such as Islamic legal and social history, modern political movements, urban life, colonial and postcolonial North Africa, oil, waste and water politics, visual culture, literature, memory, and social change.

Research and thesis supervisor

During the first semester of the programme, you will be matched with a research and thesis supervisor, preferably one of the scholars involved in the programme whose expertise connects closely to your topic.
Together with your supervisor and the study adviser, you will compose a programme that supports your immediate interests and future plans. This means that your course choices, research preparation, and thesis trajectory are guided from early in the programme.

Research

The second year is centred on your own research. In the first semester of the year, you carry out a research project related to the Middle East. Depending on your topic, this may involve fieldwork, archival research, library research, work with special collections, interviews, language-based research, textual analysis, visual analysis, digital methods, or study at another university.

Your research may take place abroad, in the Netherlands, online, or through a blended format. The form of the project depends on your research question, sources, methods, language skills, and practical possibilities.

Thesis

After completing your research project, you write your Research MA thesis. You will work closely with your supervisor throughout the thesis process. Once your thesis has been completed and receives a passing grade, you defend it publicly.

We also offer a one-year Middle Eastern Studies programme. The Research MA is especially suitable if you want more time for independent research, closer preparation for a PhD, or more intensive training in theory, methodology, and academic writing. The one-year MA may be a better fit if you are looking for a shorter programme or a different kind of professional orientation.

Have a look at the table in pdf for a quick overview of the differences. For more details on the contents, also visit the master’s in Middle Eastern Studies' pages.

The aim of the two-year master's in Middle Eastern Studies (Research) is to provide you with in-depth and specialised knowledge within the field of Middle Eastern Studies with the added value provided by a comparative, area studies approach. 

The acquisition of advanced academic skills in the interpretation of texts, the analysis and solution of conceptual problems, and the ability to independently conduct scientific research are other key goals of the programme. Opportunities are provided for students to broaden their academic skills by conducting field research, in archives and/or special collections, occasionally combined with studying subjects at another university.