• Integrated approach of religious pluralism, politics, and their many global interfaces.
• Taught by internationally recognized experts in the field.
• You can pursue your own research interests.
• Expertise on various religions, taught at non-denominational universities.
• Opportunity to study religious pluralism throughout history until present day.
• Experience international student life in two different cultures.

1 ECTS = 28 hrs. of study. One year contains of 60 ECTS. You will have on average 6 hrs. of lessons per week at the Faculty, the rest of the hours is reserved for preparation of the classes and studying.

The course units of the programme in Groningen are taught in Semester 1 (September - February). The course units of the programme in Cordoba are taught in Semester 2 (February - July). You will write your thesis (20 ECTS) and do an internship (10 ECTS) as part of the Groningen and Córdoba programme. Please note: you need to be enrolled in both programmes at the moment of graduation.

You follow part of your programme abroad. You can also do your internship abroad. In the past our students worked at the Dutch embassy with the Vatican, in Israel and Argentina. You can also opt for an internship at an NGO, like European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI), Amnesty International, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Or at the UN, for instance with the High Commissioner for Human Rights or the United Nations Development Programme.

The showed tuition fees are the fees for the programme in Groningen. The fees in Cordoba for EU/EEA-students are € 1061,60 per year.

Regarding the programme part in Groningen are Talent Grant and NL Scholarship available for non-EU students.

All applicants of the University of Groningen with a non-Dutch qualification will have to pay an application fee.

If you want to become a teacher of religion in secondary education you can additionally follow the Educational Master's programme (in Dutch).

As a graduate you can become an adviser and policymaker on interreligious issues and multicultural society. You may work in cultural organisations and companies in the public sector. In addition, you can work in the media. You can become a teacher of religion or philosophy. If you want to pursue an academic career, you can follow this track as a specialization within the Research Master's programme.

Check where the Groningen alumni end up after graduating on our alumni page.

Groningen

When you take part in this MA programme in Groningen, you will benefit from the expertise of the scholars in the Department of Jewish, Christian and Islamic Origins of the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society of the University of Groningen.

The Department is a major European centre for the study of the origins and cultural contexts of the three religious traditions and is unique in its combined focus on the multi- and interdisciplinary analysis of the texts and artifacts of these traditions. Traditional disciplines such as history, archaeology, philology, literary analysis and interpretation, codicology, palaeography, and epigraphy are combined with cutting-edge developments in fields such as artificial intelligence and forensics with a view to cracking the mysteries of the ancient religions of the Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds.

Besides the study of the foundational texts of the Jewish and Christian Bibles, and the Quran, the department puts a strong focus on the alternative traditions not included in the official Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptures, but recorded in the famous Dead-Sea scrolls, Jewish and Christian apocrypha, the Nag Hammadi collection, pre- and early Islamic inscriptions and Quranic manuscripts.

Lecturers and their expertise

• Kim Fowler is Assistant Professer of New Testament.
• Mónica Colominas Aparicio is Professor of Islam, with special attention to the Iberian Peninsula, religious minorities, muslim-christian-jewish polemics, and manuscripts.
• Seyfeddin Kara is Assistant Professor of Islamic Origins. He specialises in the study of early Islam, the Qur'an, hadith, Sunni and Shiʿi Islam, as well as the study of Muslims in Europe.
• Mladen Popović is Professor Old Testament and Early Judaism, with special attention to Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
• Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity. He specializes in alternative Christianities with a focus on the Nag Hammadi library and the Apocryphal Acts of Apostles. He also teaches in Cordoba.

Cordoba

The lecturers in Cordoba are part of the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities. Some of the lecturers work at other institutions, but teach in this programme at Cordoba University.

Lecturers and their expertise

• Maria Ángeles Gallego is a senior scientist at the Centre for Human and Social Sciences (CCHS) of the Spanish National Research Council and specializes in Judeo-Arabic language and literature and, more specifically, the history of linguistic ideas.
• Antonio J. Díaz Rodríguez focuses on Ecclesiastical elites in the Iberian world, a.o. Jewish convert presence in the Spanish-Portuguese clergy.
• Pedro Mantas España specializes in the transfers of knowledge in the Middle Ages and philosophical mermeneutics and its application to a philosophy of cinema.
• José Martínez Delgado works at the Department of Semitic Studies at the University of Granada and is an expert on the history of Hebrew lexicography in al-Andalus.
• Juan Pedro Monferrer Sala is Full Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies with a focus on Arabic language and literature.
• Israel Muñoz Gallarte specializes in Christian apocryphal literature and Greek literature.
• Dámaris Romero González is an expert on Plutarch and women in antiquity.
• Enrique Soria Mesa specializes in Jewish converts and genealogy.