Undergraduate Studies
Central European University offers three exciting new BA programs, taught by our world-class faculty specializing in the social sciences and humanities, and with the added value of offering dual Austrian and American degrees. Our BA programs are tailored for students who seek an international BA experience in small classroom settings, who appreciate having the choice to tailor their programs to meet their own interests, and who relish a challenging academic experience while living in one of Europe’s most beautiful and culturally rich cities.
Department of Cognitive Science
The Department of Cognitive Science is a thriving interdisciplinary department, which offers a PhD program with a comprehensive range of rigorous coursework and active research experience. It is a research-based training program that specializes in but is not limited to the study of the social and biological bases of cognition. Research topics include cooperation, communication, social learning, cultural transmission, joint action, developmental social cognition, neural bases of cognition, strategic decision making, visual cognition, statistical learning, and cognitive neuroscience. Students will follow courses in cognitive psychology, philosophy of mind, cognitive anthropology, computational and biological cognition, vision and linguistics, they will receive practical training and join the research programs in the laboratories of the members of the department.
Department of Economics and Business
The Department of Economics and Business is dynamic and expanding, well established as a leading department in the region, with faculty members from top American and European universities. The department offers innovative, mission-relevant and research-led business, economics, finance, and management education in its MA (in Economics, Economic Policy and Global Economic Relations), MSc (in Business Analytics, Finance and Technology Management) and PhD programs (in Economics and Business Administration).
In our MA and Economics PhD programs rigorous coursework includes core economic theory (microeconomics and macroeconomics) and econometrics, as well as study of many applied fields, including labor economics, health economics and economics of education, industrial organization, international economics, law and economics, corporate governance, among others.
In our MSc and Business PhD programs, quantitative professionals learn critical leadership and business skills, while business leaders learn to integrate key technology trends and issues in their strategic thinking. Our objective is to put business leaders and quantitative professionals in the same classroom so that they can inspire and learn from one another. Our vision also recognizes the growing social significance of management professionals.
Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy
The Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy is a center of excellence in research on environmental policy and management, offering a comprehensive curriculum for ambitious, intellectually advanced graduate students. Both general academic and specialized knowledge in a variety of related fields are offered. Emphasis is on an interdisciplinary approach to solving environmental problems; leading environmental academics from around the world contribute to both the taught curriculum and fieldwork. Focus is on international or trans-boundary problems in sustainable environmental development. The department also serves as a focal point in a network of collaborating scientists and environmental professionals from developed and developing countries worldwide.
Department of Gender Studies
The Department of Gender Studies meets the growing demand for expertise in gender issues by providing both Master's and doctoral level programs in gender studies, as well as serving as a base for non-degree studies and other activities in the field. The department attracts students from a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities, and focuses on integrative and comparative approaches in gender studies. A rich variety of intertwined scholarly interests (such as gender and (post) state-socialist studies, nationalism, theory, cultural studies, transnationalism, and international political movements) are emphasized. With an important, but not exclusive, focus on Central and Eastern Europe, both the Master's and doctoral programs seek to contribute to the development of socially relevant knowledge based on these approaches, and to critically interrogate past and present developments related to gender in culture and society.
Department of History
The Department of History offers programs of considerable breadth, on both the Master's and the Doctoral level, challenging canons by means of thorough empirical research and cutting-edge methodological and theoretical reflection. The Department seeks to train future scholars, academic and public leaders and professionals with a broad horizon. Teaching and research focus is on the history of Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, from the 16th century to the present, going beyond these geographical and temporal boundaries in a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective.
Department of International Relations
The Department of International Relations integrates international relations scholarship with regional expertise in both the Eastern and Western parts of the enlarged European Union together with the wider European neighborhood. The department's commitment to international relations theory, in both its traditional and critical forms, and to the two major sub-disciplines of security studies and international political economy, forms the foundation of the program, complemented by a necessary multi-disciplinary approach to the study of the EU and its role as a global actor. Its highly competitive programs, which attract top-level graduate students from around the world to both the Master's and doctoral levels, provide an enriching environment for study and research on issues that concern today's globalizing world. The faculty includes scholars from international relations, history, law, economics, and comparative politics disciplines.
Department of Legal Studies
The Department of Legal Studies provides high quality advanced legal education and education in human rights. Its programs are among the finest in Europe, enabling students to obtain a solid grounding in fundamental legal concepts in civil law and common law systems and to develop unique skills in comparative analysis. Our students are encouraged to see complex legal and social problems in their broader context and seek solutions across continents and disciplines.
Our first master programs were established in 1992 to respond to the challenges of constitutional, legal and political transition to democracy. We have gradually expanded our curriculum to explore the challenges established and emerging democracies and their societies face in an increasingly globalized world. Today, our students come from over 30 countries and are received by our outstanding international faculty from 20 countries. The diversity of our academic community serves as a resource for professional development, a constant source of inspiration for developing new ideas and an unmatched opportunity for personal development in and outside classes.
Department of Medieval Studies
The Department of Medieval Studies offers multidisciplinary courses on both the Master's and the doctoral levels to medievalists from diverse backgrounds (history, art history, archaeology, philology, philosophy and theology). The program focuses on late antique and medieval civilization in Europe (c. 300-1550 AD), dealing with different methods of communication, migration of peoples, mobility of objects, texts, and ideas in the larger medieval oikumene, including Asia and North Africa. Students are provided with a broad grounding in these areas as well as training in advanced research methodology with special reference to interdisciplinary, comparative and supranational issues.
Department of Network and Data Science
The Department of Network and Data Science at Central European University provides an organizational platform for research in network science, with a special focus on applications to practical social problems. The department offers a PhD program and an Advance Certificate Program in Network Science.
Data Science tools and the Network Science approach offer a unique perspective to tackle complex problems, impenetrable to linear-proportional thinking.The data deluge of our times has opened up unprecedented opportunities to study and understand structure and function of social, economic and political systems. The concept of networks has become indispensable in several social science disciplines. Data-driven network science aims at explaining complex phenomena at larger scales emerging from simple principles of making network links. A key element of the mission of the Department is to work across disciplines to bring network and data science tools to many fields of the social sciences.
The Department of Network and Data Science translates these ideas into research projects - our faculty have won several major grants, from European Union and US funding agencies.
Department of Philosophy
The Department of Philosophy offers a comprehensive program, covering the major areas of philosophical study, leading to Master's and doctoral degrees. The MA programs are designed to give broad and thorough training in all major fields of philosophy, with the possibility of deeper acquaintance in a chosen field. The department's doctoral program aims to train professionals prepared to undertake academic careers, as researchers or university teachers. Both MA and doctoral programs promote a scholarly attitude that combines historical and analytical approaches in philosophy. Curricula are designed so that students are required to study each of the major fields of contemporary philosophy. A specialization in history of philosophy is also available, including the possibility of specialization in ancient philosophy. Thus, graduates gain the rare ability to conduct a dialogue across the dividing lines occasionally fragmenting the philosophical discipline.
Department of Political Science
The Department of Political Science invites students wishing to develop the analytical skills necessary to achieve excellence in their areas of study. With original scholarship, basic and applied research, and creative instructors constituting an essential core upon which to draw, graduate work at the department attracts an outstanding selection of uniquely qualified students from throughout the region and the world. The department's curriculum is unique within Europe, covering almost all areas of political studies and offers in-depth expertise in the comparative politics of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Representing a comprehensive range of academic approaches and expertise, the department's faculty address questions of political philosophy, democratization and regime change, constitutional politics, political economy, media, voting behavior, party politics, human rights and Europeanization, in a comparative manner.
Department of Public Policy
The Department of Public Policy (DPP) is a multidisciplinary institution focused on the study of global public policy issues both in theory and in practice. Through excellence in teaching and research, DPP aims to create an educational experience that involves not only the acquisition of skills and knowledge but also the cultivation of a mindset that emphasizes entrepreneurship, innovation, cultural awareness and commitment to the public good.
DPP aims to work with students, faculty, researchers and practitioners who are unafraid to challenge prevalent assumptions in the world of public policy and brave enough to propose new solutions. The Department strives to equip these individuals with the tools to construct a community of "purpose beyond power."
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology
The Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology offers an integrated program aiming to go beyond the disciplinary boundaries between sociology and anthropology, asking new questions about social analysis, regionalizations, and of sociology and anthropology as disciplines. The department is committed to a non-Eurocentric perspective. By analyzing the complex process of globalization at both the macro- and micro-level, students learn to recognize the global and the local as mutually constitutive processes. They are further equipped with a critical and comparative perspective on our contemporary world through a broad range of courses: social theory; place making; post-colonialism; research methods; urban processes; meanings and practices of gender; social inequalities; dynamics of power and resistance; and the cross-border flow of people, ideas and commodities within the structures of the globalizing world.
Doctoral School of Political Science, Public Policy, and International Relations
The Doctoral School is an academic community home to more than 50 permanent faculty members and over 90 doctoral students. The Doctoral Program in Political Science has been established by the School of Public Policy and Departments of Political Science and International Relations with the aim of contributing to a spirit of cooperation between faculty and students and foster the consolidation of a common academic community across the three departments. The Doctoral School offers and administers the Doctoral (PhD) Program in Political Science. The PhD program aims to provide the theoretical and methodological skills necessary to facilitate a broader comparative perspective which will mediate and engage scholarship and practices from both European and non-European contexts. We expect applicants who are ready to meet the challenges of critical thinking, academic excellence, social responsibility and inter-contextual perspective.
Nationalism Studies Program
The Nationalism Studies Program responds to the growing demand for new knowledge and teaching in the field. The program engages students in empirical and theoretical study of issues of nationalism, self-determination, problems of state-formation, ethnic conflict, minority protection, language and citizenship rights and constitutional design in ethnically-divided societies. Drawing upon the supranational milieu of CEU, the program encourages a critical, non-sectarian and interdisciplinary stance toward the study of nationalism. An international teaching staff representing a wide range of disciplinary expertise including history, social theory, economics, legal studies, sociology, anthropology, international relations and political science provides a high quality learning experience. A wide selection of courses are offered to provide students with a complex theoretical grounding and advanced training in the methodology of applied social science.
Romani Studies Program
The Romani Studies Program responds to the growing interest for expertise and interdisciplinary knowledge in Roma related issues by offering an advanced certificate program for MA and PhD students who are enrolled in other CEU programs. The advanced certificate program offers an opportunity to engage with broader theories, policies, legislations and research methodologies which are fundamental to understand the complex situation of Roma and other racialized groups and the multifaceted challenges that policy makers are facing in designing equality, social justice and social inclusion policies. The courses will cover theoretical and policy issues faced by Roma ranging from identity to race/ ethnicity, gender, sexuality, from diversity to racialization, from poverty to racial discrimination, from structural discrimination and inequality to political mobilization and participation, and from recognition to redistributive justice. Our curriculum pays a specific attention to studying the racialization of Roma, the social construction of racial differences and its relation to the perpetuation of racism and racial domination.
Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies
The Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies (CEMS), heir to the Center for Hellenic Traditions (2004/5–2009/10), promotes the study of the eastern Mediterranean and its hinterlands from antiquity, especially the Hellenistic oikoumenē (323–30 BCE), to the end of the Ottoman period. It aims to create an academic environment for the promotion of a greater understanding of the eastern Mediterranean as a key area of world history, and thus shed new light on the significant challenges this region faces at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The center perceives the Mediterranean as an ideal framework for the analysis of interconnections across geographical, chronological, imperial, religious and disciplinary boundaries, focusing on east-west interaction and exchanges, the movement of people, objects and ideas to and from the eastern Mediterranean, as well as imperial (dis)continuities – Roman, Byzantine, Islamic Caliphate, Ottoman – from the ancient to the modern period.
Center for Religious Studies
The Center for Religious Studies (CRS) is an academic forum at CEU fostering the study of religion. The mission of the center is to initiate and to coordinate research and to disseminate the results of research by mounting and fostering academic events, and publications that address religion-related questions in critical ways.
The CRS collaborates with CEU departments and academic units and is a hub of work in the Humanities. It crosses the borders of disciplines, confessional and geo-political categorizations, and covers periods from ancient to modern times. With an international advisory board and institutional contacts throughout the region and worldwide, the CRS provides an important site for academic research and communication.
The Advanced Certificate in Religious Studies, coordinated by the Center for Religious Studies, awards a non-degree certificate in Religious Studies to MA and PhD students enrolled in participating CEU departments. As part of their studies, participating students engage in the study of religious phenomena from a historical point of view, from Late Antiquity to modernity, and a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives.
The Advanced Certificate in Religious Studies was launched in 2007 by the Center for Religious Studies (formerly the Religious Studies Program). Its diverse course offerings cover the three monotheistic religions, over a vast span of time, and from multidisciplinary perspectives. To this end, departments participate through their course offerings, including History, Medieval Studies, Philosophy, Jewish Studies, Sociology and Social Anthropology, International Relations and European Studies.
Visual Studies Platform
Visual Studies Platform (VSP) is a cross-disciplinary initiative designed to explore and propose innovative approaches to research and teaching visual imagery in the digital century. It encompasses research on visual theory, method and history across different media forms, including visual arts, film, photography and performance. Drawing on the growing expertise across CEU and beyond, it aims to foster the visual component in our research and practice, from the humanities towards social and policy studies. For this it invites CEU students and faculty to engage with theories and practices of analogue and digital image-making as well as interpretation through a web of interrelated activities, including thematic colloquia, workshops, summer schools and a variety of cross-departmental courses. Click here to register.