Contact & FAQ

UT students from all master programmes are eligible to apply. Ideally, the Transdisciplinary Master-Insert is pursued after completing the majority of your master courses and prior to starting a graduation assignment, but this is not a strict requirement.

We welcome every UT master's student to apply for the Transdisciplinary Master-Insert. In fact, we strive to have students who come from a diverse set of disciplines.
For example: the first (pilot) cohort consisted of six students from Civil Engineering, Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society, Business Information Technology, Psychology and Industrial Design Engineering.

We can accommodate a maximum of 30 students per year.

The Transdisciplinary Master-Insert is a full-time six-month programme. As such, we do not advise you to combine the activities and assignments from other master's programmes or other educational activities.

We strongly encourage students to follow the programme full-time without any extra commitments. This is important to ensure the Transdisciplinary Master-Insert community feeling. Any exceptions should be discussed with the respective master study advisers and the programme director of the master-insert, Klaasjan Visscher (k.visscher@utwente.nl).

The Transdisciplinary Master-Insert takes place once a year, starting in November (Quarter 2) and ending in April (Quarter 3).

Roughly speaking, most modules will have contact hours on Monday afternoons and on the mornings between Tuesday and Friday. These contact hours will be in the form of workshops, feedback sessions, inspiring lectures, or discussion & reflection hours. The afternoons are often reserved for teamwork and self-study. Note that times may differ depending on the module (e.g., some workshops may be offered as full-day instead of half-day workshops). 

For questions regarding visas / residence permits, you will need to talk to the international office. We do not foresee any complications extending visas / residence permits as you will still be enrolled at the university. 

For questions regarding scholarships, you will need to talk to the organisation that awarded your scholarship for an extension. Currently, we have the opportunity to offer one scholarship specifically for the Transdisciplinary Master-Insert. Please contact Klaasjan Visscher (k.visscher@utwente.nl) for more information.

There are 6, 5-EC modules, which add up to a 30 EC programme in total. For more details on each module, check out our curriculum page.

It’s both. In fact, the six modules are designed and developed in such a way that these two aspects are brought together with equal weight harmoniously!

The transdisciplinary master-insert goes one step further than the existing multi-disciplinary projects at the UT. Not only by bringing different disciplines together, but also by weaving these disciplines together to create new, transdisciplinary practices and knowledge spaces. Furthermore, the Transdisciplinary Master-Insert provides opportunities for acquiring advanced transdisciplinary skills with an explicit attention to personal development.

All modules in the Master-Insert incorporate workshop-style activities and self-organised learning sessions. Most work is to be carried out in groups that will work in a transdisciplinary manner.

The assessment philosophy of the Master-Insert is to focus on feedback in order to enable professional and personal growth. Instead of receiving a grade, you receive a pass (or fail) for the modules, together with extensive feedback related to the quality of your work and the process. 

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN & SELF-EVALUATION REPORT

To stimulate you to actively engage in the programme and to integrate your learning in a personal, professional, and academic sense, you write a Personal Development Plan at the start of the Master-Insert. You define personal goals you want to reach during the programme. You monitor your proggress by building a portfolio with achievements in the modules and teacher feedback. Finally, you reflect on your growth in a Self-Evaluation Report. 

We take United Nations’ 17 Global Challenges as our starting point, while at the same time, connecting these to the local challenges experience in the Twente Region to ensure good stakeholder access and hands-on experiences. We are open to incorporating cases and themes that our potential students are passionate about – so please do mention such cases and themes in your application to the programme, i.e., in your personal motivation letter.

To read more about former students’ experiences, check our student experiences page!