Mission statement

The Graduate School for the Humanities (GSH) of the Faculty of Arts at the RUG is committed to providing advanced training at graduate level for the most promising PhD candidates in Archaeology, Literature and Culture Studies, and Linguistics. The GSH offers the organisational and pastoral infrastructure within which full-time (FT) and part-time (PT) graduate students participate in advanced training and supervised research. The membership of the GSH is large and diverse, comprising:

• promovendi – PhD students – who will complete up to four years of research and training (FT) leading to the award of a doctorate (PhD)
• Research Masters (ReMA) students , who will complete up to two years’ FT graduate work as a dedicated part of what may eventually become their PhD

ReMA students are engaged in what is conceived as an an important ‘research orientation’ phase of study, while the PhD is conceived as a ‘research delivery’ phase of an incipient academic career.

Research students are encouraged to develop original ideas, collaborate with local, national and international experts in their fields and develop their research skills in an interactive and supportive environment. ‘Interactive’ here means that individual students have the chance to explore their own (and others’) ideas in small-group settings; they also give presentations to groups of their peers and receive feedback on those presentations. ‘Supportive’ here means that research students will meet their supervisors on a regular basis and receive regular and constructive feedback on their progress. All student members of the GSH also have access to a ‘vertrouwenspersoon’ – a confidential advisor, working independently of supervisors – who if needed is able to give strictly confidential advice about pastoral matters.

The training programmes offered by the GSH allow us to claim that the RUG can provide ‘tailor-made supervision’ within the Faculty of Arts.This means that at appropriate stages of individual research careers, graduates have the chance, in consultation with their supervisor, to complete training courses as relevant as possible to their particular research track: these will include (i) generic courses (e.g. writing, presenting, organising and networking) (ii) discipline-specific forms of training closely adapted to more precise needs of individual research. In the last context, some courses are offered annually by national GraduateSchools and/or other highly-rated national bodies, while other courses are offered from within the Faculty. As graduates’ research profiles grow, it is expected that research scholars will attend international conferences and symposia, offer their own work to leading journals and begin academic networking in national and international settings.

Above all, what the GSH seeks to provide is an environment in which individual and personal aspiration, as this is expressed in intellectual endeavour, is carefully supported both locally and nationally so that the next generations of research scholars are able to continue their research and professional careers in productive, coherent and purposeful ways.