Sociology – (M.Sc.)

The Sociology Master’s program prepares students for continuing their studies at the postgraduate level and pursuing an academic career in the social sciences, as researchers or university teachers. The program also provides relevant education for students who are planning: careers in such fields as counseling, criminal justice, education, international relations, journalism, market research or public relations, public health, social welfare and social work, public administration, or urban planning. It may also be a valuable major for those who want to enter law, medicine, architecture, business, or politics.

The program is intended for full-time study, with a standard length of 4 semesters. It is offered to students who have already earned an undergraduate degree in the fields of humanities, social sciences, political science or other related fields.

The structure of the program seeks to develop and cultivate students’ general analytical skills and their ability informal teaching to place various social phenomena within the framework of contemporary social theory, while giving them tools to design and carry out scientific research. A comparative approach to post-socialist societies, problems of democratic transitions, and the interpretation of contemporary social and sociological issues within the European as well as global contexts are part of the curricula.

Courses cover topics that reflect the faculty’s wide-ranging research interests, such as current issues of identity formation, the process of the ethnization of identities and problems of co-existence between different ethnic groups, the character and role of civil society in different historical contexts, changing patterns of migration and the integration of minorities, questions of social exclusion and inclusion, analysis of social problems generated or intensified during the period of democratic transition, and issues such as social stratification, unemployment, degradation of the natural environment, poverty, population aging, the crisis of the traditional family, gender relations, and youth and inter-generational relations.

The degree program is also open to students whose aim is not to study for a graduate degree, but rather to gain individual credits. Such students may enroll in individual courses of their choice; the tuition fee charged is proportionate to the number of credits earned.

Sociology provides students with basic skills that enable them to understand, analyze and explain social phenomena, and conduct sociological research. The theoretical as well as methodological knowledge gained prepares students to make sense of the rapidly changing world that we live in and participate in shaping its future development.

The graduates of the Program are trained for either further higher education (doctoral) study or for analytical positions in various kinds of institutions (marketing, administration on the international, national or local levels, polling agencies, NGO sector, consultant firms, media and media analysis, cultural industry, human resource agencies, etc.), or for teaching positions on the basic and secondary level of education, etc.