Religious Studies

Religious Studies is also the only bachelor's degree in Groningen that offers so many anthropological courses! Furthermore, I like the small and personal faculty; everyone knows each other and it is very easy to talk to a professor, lecturer, or fellow student.

While writing my thesis I found the combination of law and religion very interesting. I hope to be able to hold a public administration position later and then mainly focus on social issues in our society.

Coming into the study there were areas I was excited to learn about and other elements that I was less excited about, but getting to experience all of them led to me finding new interests while also having the relief that I hadn't committed to a three year study of others. Additionally, the level of freedom when it comes to topics to research and work with is wonderful because even within the context of each course, you can find topics of research you are passionate about to go deeper into.

The biggest thing you learn from this BA is not any facts and figures, but rather how to formulate questions and then try to find answers to them. Of the more than 25 courses I have taken for this BA, all but four or five have been graded off of final papers or projects and not off of exams. This highlights the importance of being able to think, plan, research, and write over pure memorization that some other programs emphasize.

Right now I am starting the MA in Heritage and Religion. I chose this MA because of the incredible number of options one has within the field, particularly in the direction of project/organizational work which is something I have discovered my enjoyment of through the study association Gerardus, as well as other study-adjacent roles during my time here.

My advice to international students is to have an open mindset, to challenge yourself to learn new things, and work hard, but also join the student life and have fun next to the studies. Try out all the opportunities the university and the city has to offer!So far, all of the courses have been very interesting, especially when the teachers themselves are enthusiastic about the subjects and bring their own experiences into the lectures. My favorite first-year course unit is the one on Judaism. In addition to interesting lectures, we toured Groningen for important locations and traveled to Amsterdam to visit Jewish synagogues and museums to learn more.At the moment my plans for the future are quite open, there are many options for master's programmes. I do know I want to continue studying religion and culture. After graduating, I hope to work in an educational institute, or in spiritual care. I would like to work with people and have a positive impact on people’s lives.

I am particularly interested in the similarities between different religions and cultures, a subject that I now often incorporate into the lessons I design. These similarities can be found not only in the here and now, but also in mythology and ancient stories. Many papers I have written focus on comparative religion or comparative mythology, for example I have compared Oedipus Rex to the story of King David in the Old Testament. For the same course, a fellow student wrote about asceticism and the concept of the wilderness in contrast to cities in early Judaism. So there is a lot of room for personal interpretation. In addition, there is also room for electives or, for example, an Erasmus Exchange, in which you are well supervised by the study advisor.In my third year, I studied in Copenhagen for a semester. The best part of this experience was the (student) life in Copenhagen. The courses I took were very interesting and instructive, but I was not only at the faculty to study. For a few hours a week I volunteered at the faculty café and on Friday evenings this café became a bar where you could buy a beer for less than a euro. The cheapest place to drink beer in Copenhagen! Life in Denmark is more expensive than in the Netherlands, but with the Erasmus grant you receive when you go on exchange, you can get by just fine.The Religious Studies programme has given me the space to discover what I like, and that is teaching. In a few months I will have completed my bachelor's degree in Religious Studies. My plan is to first take a gap year and work as a teacher in secondary education. After that, I want to follow the educational master's degree, so that I can obtain a first-degree qualification.

Why do we do what we do? What makes us happy? How can we move towards greater peace and connection as people? …And indeed the international, interdisciplinary place of research and education, the engagement with other students and teachers, brought me closer to understanding those questions and pondering about possible answers and approaches to answers.

Anthropological topics and research sparked my interest the most. I love getting out there, talking to people, deeply listening, observing, and participating in new environments. Many times, I started out conducting fieldwork with a certain view, which after a day got crashed in the most beautiful way possible, in awe of how different things turn out to be if we look closer and deeper.

My favorite course was the course “Religion, Diversity and Identity”. In the first half of the course, we read and discussed literature about 'super-diverse' cities. But my absolute highlight was that at the end of the course, we spent a week doing ethnographic fieldwork in the “Oude Westen”, a neighborhood in Rotterdam.

To this end, we focus on, for example, guiding young people with their identity issues or their daytime activities, and we guide parents not to lose contact with their child. In addition, we provide information to professionals to recognize signs of radicalization in good time and we provide tools for professionals to properly discuss this theme. During my studies in Religious Studies, I gained a lot of substantive knowledge about religions and the power that religions and worldviews can have in everyday life. But what I find most valuable is that I have learned to step outside your own frame of reference and to (want to) understand other philosophies of life. This ability and curiosity to look at themes from someone else's point of view is very important in my work and it is crucial for many current social issues. This study teaches you to adopt a certain attitude that you can use well in many fields of work.

In addition, you also learn the social psychological approaches to teaching. What is the right approach in different situations? How can you best offer effective and meaningful teaching? I appreciated that a lot of thought went into these aspects, too.As soon as I graduated, I started teaching at CSG Comenius secondary school in Leeuwarden, where I did my placement. I received good, practical supervision from the programme and I also learned a great amount from my placement coach at CSG Comenius. This combination ensures that, as a student, you gradually become more confident in your role as a teacher.Finally, for my Master’s thesis I researched the ways in which the school subject of Theology/Philosophy can be implemented meaningfully in the context of innovations in education. In my opinion, this is the major strength of this degree programme: on the one hand, you are trained from a practice-oriented perspective; on the other hand, you still actively conduct academic research during your Master’s thesis.

We discuss, among other things, how religiosity and spirituality relate to meaning-making and human well-being. We do this not only theoretically, but also by means of concrete examples. For example, how can religion help people to cope with cancer? How does prayer work? But also: in what ways does religion impact the social embedding of people?Human behavior is complex, both on an individual and social level. When it comes to religion in the Netherlands, people often speak of “conservative Christians”, “fundamentalist Muslims” or “tree hugging hippies”. It's easy to assume and generalize. I want students to ask critical questions. What do we actually mean by conservative? What is the difference between Muslims and Islam? How do religious minorities relate to the majority in a society? What kind of power relations play a role there?

In particular, I contribute lectures on climate refugees and on hope. Migration and displacement is a key area of my research and it is also one of the most severe challenges we as a global community currently face. We often think about climate change as a scientific, ecological, economic or political problem. But climate change is also fundamentally a moral problem, because some people and countries will be (and are already) more affected by the worst consequences of climate change than others. Climate change will exacerbate existing inequalities and injustices, as well as generate new forms of marginalization and exclusion. The course unit on Climate Change, End Times and Sustainable Futures that I teach, is a space for people to familiarise themselves with what different traditions have to say about these inequalities – between different groups of people, but also between humanity and nature. When it comes to climate change, migration and other global justice issues, the picture can be very bleak. For this reason, I also like to conclude the course with a lecture on hope. What is hope? How do we find hope? How do we keep going and stay motivated and motivate others when it can feel like what we do makes very little difference? I hope my students develop an appreciation for the complex moral issues that climate change raises, and find space in the course to deal with and explore their own fears, anxieties and hopes about a future climate-affected world.