Graduation Ceremony Crisis and Security Management (MSc)
On 9 April 2019 the graduation ceremony of the master Crisis and Security Management (MSc) took place. Three graduates were asked how they felt now, what they are going to miss, whether they would have wanted to do something different looking back and what their future plans are.
Carmen van Polanen Petel
Carmen van Polanen Petel wrote a master thesis on how anonymity is a big advantage for drug dealers that work online compared to drug dealers in the offline world.
What I will miss the most is studying itself. It is nice to be able to organise your time freely and I will miss that. I found the process of writing a thesis very difficult, but in the end it is very nice to be able to do your own research. During your master's you just have subjects, exams or papers, you know how to handle that and you learn a lot of different interesting subjects. With your thesis, however, you really have your own project and you start without reference. You just have to start somewhere and that is incredibly challenging but, in the end, you will have an end result which you can be very proud of and you will feel really satisfied. Regarding future plans, I will not continue my studies anytime soon. But I would like to become a detective and study at the police academy and then combine working with studying somewhere in the future.
Michel Soomers
Michiel Soomers wrote a master thesis on which crisis management strategies are successful and less successful in tackling social media events that escalate in crises.
I am actually very happy that I am done. I am working towards my second Master's degree in Public Administration, International European Governance, so I still have mixed feelings; I am relieved to be done with one thesis but the other one is still in process. In retrospect I would have liked to finish my thesis faster. I did a lot besides my thesis, which was very good, and I learned a lot from it, but I would have liked to have more focus on my thesis. The best thing about this Master course was how current the subjects are. You are on top of what is happening in the world and I really enjoyed working on those problems. What I liked a little less about this master was that some topics were only covered on the surface without really going in depth. But all in all, I enjoyed this master very much.
Maarten de Leeuw
Maarten de Leeuw wrote a master thesis on the use of anti-colonial discourse in Isis propaganda.
It's been a while since I submitted my thesis, I did so in January, but I'm still very happy that I finished it. I am still busy submitting my thesis for another study, but it still feels like a nice stopover. However, I would have rather reversed the order so that I would not be writing two theses in succession, for instance by doing an internship afterwards instead of before. What I liked most about this Master is that its topics are very current, you deal with many problems that are of present importance. What I didn't like so much was that the courses were rather short, which could sometimes feel a bit rushed.
About this Master's programme
In the 1-year MSc CSM programme you focus on management/governance of such highly complex security challenges as privacy, terrorism, or cyber-attacks: their social and political impacts, the diminishing role of national authorities, and new developments such as social media.