Leiden to Lisbon

For the last few weeks, we have been quite busy organizing a field trip to Lisbon for Honours College. We will be researching Portugal’s integration policy and cultural diversity during a 4 day stay in Lisbon.

But: Who are “We” and what is Honours College?

Honours College is a program at Leiden University where motivated students can earn an extra 30 study credits with interdisciplinary courses, workshops and research projects. The neat thing for the students: not only do they get to study in small groups with some of the best teaching staff of Leiden Uni, it is also pretty well funded. So if you get the chance to join: I highly recommend it! Watch this short video of the Science and Society track to find out more!

“We” are 19 students of Psychology, Anthropology and Political Science in the International Cohort of the Science and Society track.

As the organizing committee, we brainstormed which European city would be interesting to visit and decided to look at Lisbon as well as Vienna. In Vienna, we thought about researching the topic “Morbid city-is death really omnipresent in Vienna?”, but we soon realized that it will be difficult to find enough lecturers to find out more about the topic and drop that idea.

Discovering Lisbon with Honours College

So Lisbon it is. In preparation of the field trip, we already had two lectures. A member of a think tank, who works on integration projects and evaluation of integration policies in The Netherlands and other European countries told us about the history and political background of Portuguese Integration policies. The second lecture was about research in integration policies and how integration policies can be assessed.

We are also putting together a reader with short summaries of the lectures, key articles and background information on the different speakers and organization we will visit in Lisbon. By now (it is another two weeks until we are flying there), our agenda is already filled with visits to NGOs, museums, the university and the local administration of everything immigration and immigrant related in Lisbon.

I will post a best-off Lisbon in a few weeks!