Information on the Master's program

From the winter semester 2024/25 the Master’s degree course can be studied under the name “Empirical Cultural Studies and Political Anthropology”, with equivocal concent and structure to the previous course “European Ethnology”. Students of the present MA course are encouraged to switch into the new program.

Building on the Bachelor's degree program in European Ethnology (or Cultural Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Folklore and Empirical Cultural Studies and related subjects of the social sciences and humanities), the Master's degree program provides in-depth theoretical and practical training in cultural studies forms of research, argumentation and action and aims to enable students to independently and critically explore various aspects of research and cultural work.

The unique feature of this Master's degree program at the University of Graz is its conception as project studies in combination with a critical perspective on power structures within everyday cultures. Students develop a project in which specific content is researched and presented. The joint research process ultimately leads to a cultural studies product: a publication, an exhibition, a film, a website and much more. The students acquire their knowledge of ethnographic and cultural analysis methodology, interpretation, reflection and theory through "learning by doing" and also acquire important non-academic professional qualifications by communicating their research content to the public. The project topic can be expanded into a Master's thesis, but a different topic can also be chosen for the Master's thesis. the new  project year begins in the summer semester. The student training research project also always specifies a topic for the year: During the project year, other courses also relate to this annual theme; guest lectures, lecture series etc. enable a broad discussion both internally and externally.

A detailed description of the MA project studies can be found here.