This programme is taught in English.

Multiple Lives: New Trends in Ethnography and Theory is a postgraduate programme in the broad scientific field of the social sciences, with social and cultural anthropology as the main scientific discipline, and sociology, human geography and the social studies of science and technology as collaborative scientific disciplines. This postgraduation programme introduces students to recent critical developments concerning social life, particularly by relation to the dilemmas of human sustainability in today’s globalised world.

By characterizing life in terms of multiplicity/plurality, we want to show that it is a process of becoming and of assembling in contexts of relatedness.  Thus, ‘Multiple lives’ approaches sociality as life and life as sociality, critically re-conceptualizing the nature-culture divide implicit in earlier theories. In line with that, we introduce students to the practical and ethical dilemmas that face the study of contemporary society from the perspective of intensive, participatory research and archival research.

Taking a qualitative (ethnographic) approach to life and sociality, teaching will be structured by a joint approach to society, environment, and power, namely in terms of territoriality, coloniality, migration trends, ethnic and religious polarisation, human-animal relations, gender concerns, and financial imperialism. As a result, students will become better equipped to intervene in the social arena by means of qualitative research data and by being familiar with the critical trends that are changing contemporary social sciences.