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University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The University of Amsterdam

The University of Amsterdam (UvA) was founded more than 350 years ago. Soon after the Second World War the department of Political and Social Sciences started to dedicate special efforts to the study of mass media, newspapers in particular.

In the 1970s, the department of Communication Science was founded. Today, with more than 1800 undergraduate and graduate students (as of 2008), the University of Amsterdam has by far the biggest academic communication department in the Netherlands.

Teaching at the UvA’s Communication Science department is organized under the College of Communication for undergraduate education, and the Graduate School of Communication for graduate programs. The Graduate School offers several master’s programs in both Dutch and English language—including the Erasmus Mundus specialism “Communicating Europe: Media and politics”—as well as a PhD programme.

The faculty of the Communication Department is also directly involved in the Department’s research institute, the School of Communications Research (ASCoR). ASCoR is the largest institute for communication science research in Europe and one of the largest in the world. The latest research assessment by the Quality Assurance Netherlands Universities (for 2001-2007) evaluated ASCoR as ‘Excellent’ (5 on a 5-point scale).

Exploring Amsterdam

Although Amsterdam is famous, it is not a big city. About 750,000 people live there – and you can ride your bike from left to right and from north to south easily within one day. Amsterdam has one other university (the Vrije University) and a lot of other institutions for higher education, making it a real student city. There are many ways to enjoy yourself as an international student, and many on-campus organisations to help students.

In the Netherlands the Euro is the official coin as in many other European cities. Prices are more or less the same as in Denmark although the cost of apartments tend to be a bit higher while drinks are less expensive.

For all kinds of information for foreigners on what to do, see, how to live, what to expect, please check Iamsterdam