Critical Urbanisms

The English-language master’s program Critical Urbanisms at the University of Basel trains a new generation of graduates who are capable of bridging the rifts between city and country as well as north and south in order to better understand the complexity of urban living environments in the 21st century and the extraordinary challenges to tackle current urbanization. The internationally renowned professors who lead the program deal with the development of cities and territories from a global perspective and follow a curriculum that teaches students both theoretical and practical skills.In the first semester the students get to know methods from different disciplines of urban studies. The second semester offers you fascinating opportunities to actively deal with urban research. Fifteen students can complete the second semester at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. The research here focuses primarily on cities and urbanization in the global south, as these are of central importance for research into everyday forms of ability to act and thus also decisive for today’s global urbanization. There is no entitlement to a place at the University of Cape Town. A second, newly developed option is a research semester that deals with transregional urbanization processes and combines local with international field research. The central question of this research is how, from a postcolonial perspective, global systems shape divergent local conditions and urban living environments. A third option in exceptional cases is a one-year course in anthropological field research methods, which includes a research trip between the semesters.In the third semester, the students in the Research Studio devote themselves to collaborative, interdisciplinary research practices in which methods from the humanities and social sciences are combined with visual and spatial analyzes and modes of representation. The Research Studio takes place in a specially reserved room that has the character of a workshop. Small teams of students with different disciplinary backgrounds work closely together here. Essays, graphic publications, maps, diagrams, photo projects, videos and installations are all worked on.Another component of the course are seminars and lectures by the Urban Studies department on a variety of urban topics. They aim to provide students with in-depth knowledge of specific disciplinary approaches. Students can also take elective courses from the wide range of courses on offer at the University of Basel (e.g. in African studies, anthropology or history).The course is concluded with a master’s thesis, in which a topic in the field of urban studies is thoroughly researched. Ideally, the written work is supplemented with a practice-related and / or visual component in order to make the research results accessible to a wider audience.The Critical Urbanisms master’s course is held in English. It is aimed at domestic and foreign students of the humanities and social sciences as well as students in the fields of architecture, art, design, urban planning and spatial planning. We strongly recommend foreign students who are not EU citizens to submit their application as early as possible, as the registration process for a residence permit can take up to four months and this process can only begin after the letter of admission has been issued.