Intercultural Studies

专业介绍

Interculturality in a transnational world

Every day, we encounter cultural differences in both our private and professional lives.

These differences may be rooted in specific societies or language areas, but also in professions, ethnicities, social groups, generations, and organisations.

As a student of Intercultural Studies, you gain insight into different theoretical approaches to interculturality in a transnational world. You work with the interrelations between local, national, regional, and transnational identities.

The programme’s main focus is to understand how cultural forms and cultural interactions are embedded in specific historical, societal, and linguistic contexts, while simultaneously evolving in relation to their wider environment.

Through the programme, you strengthen your analytical skills and develop your ability to critically reflect on and facilitate interculturality. You learn to use cultural differences as a resource, enabling you to navigate and act in intercultural landscapes. This prepares you for a career in both the private and public sectors, as well as in international organisations and NGOs.

You develop competences in communicating with international partners within organisations, identifying opportunities and challenges for development, initiating projects, and developing new solutions.

An Interdisciplinary programme

At Intercultural Studies, we draw on concepts and methods from the humanities (e.g. history, literature, media, and language studies) and the social sciences (e.g. intercultural approaches to organisational studies and innovation). This provides you with the necessary tools to analyse intercultural environments in their historical and social contexts.

The programme’s intercultural character also allows you to strengthen your language skills. The shared language of the programme is international English, and all teaching in the common courses is conducted in English. Teaching in the language-specific tracks is offered in either English, French, German, or Spanish. In this way, you develop your communication skills in your chosen language and learn to use it as a working language.

Courses consist of lectures, dialogue-based seminars, group work, and feedback from lecturers and fellow students. A significant part of the teaching is also problem- and practice-oriented, where you work with empirical case studies in collaboration with external partners. As a result, class sizes and teaching methods vary considerably.