The Graduate Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars GHIS

I am a GHIS graduate! Just three days ago the graduation ceremony for GHIS has taken place in the marvelous 'Aula' hall at the Academiegebouw of the Utrecht University. The event was attended by a number of formidable professors who taught us throughout the academic year, among them was the rector magnificus of Utrecht University, prof. Kummeling.  

Indeed each of us was allowed to bring their families and friends, overall it was a great experience. I myself invited and was pleasured with the presence of my fiance and my best friend. When surrounded with those people success is feasible and enjoyable. 

For this occasion, I decided to dedicate this blog and the next for sharing my experiences and thoughts about GHIS, but before doing so I'd like to present some informatiom about GHIS.

First of all, GHIS is an honours programme for Master students who wish to do extra effort next to their Master's. In other words, or in the words of the Honours dean, GHIS is for those 'more-able' students who constantly strive for more. 

Second, GHIS, which stands for Graduate Honours Interdisciplinary Seminars is about Interdisciplinarity; in a nutshell Interdisciplinarity involves combining two or more academic disciplines into one. In other words, it is the annexes between two bodies of knowledge or it is using multiple ideas to get one result, i.e. a researcher who combines two disciplines, or a team that consists of a group of researchers from different disciplines/backgrounds. In this case GHIS is the second type.

Third, the programme practically consists of two main components, but yet it has various embedded learning aspects as I will be discussing here and in the next blog. 
The first component of GHIS is the 'seminars'. The idea of such seminars is to expose us to a variety of  studies and disciplines. In principle nobody is allowed to attend courses related to their discipline or study. As to myself, in block one I selected and was admitted to the philosophy seminars which  was taught by the famous Prof. dr. Rosi Braidotti. In the second block I attended a very unique and reviving subject called 'Complex Systems' which was presented to us by three professors from Biology, Physics and Sociology whom introduced us to this notion of complex systems, and inspired us with how they apply it in their respective disciplines. Also they guided us on how we could do the same when we get back to our disciplines. I suggest you Google it, and if you apply for this programme in the next years you must apply for this seminar.  

In, the third block I attended the Dynamics of Youth, which was not less fascinating, but yet we did some sort of field work. In all three seminars, I had to do an assignment in the form of a written paper or a presentation. These were my choices and yet there were many other appealing ones. As I am limited to certain amount of words, I will continue this in the next week's blog. I will talk about the three remaining points; the second component of GHIS which consists of  the research proposal and the trip to Heidelberg. Then I'll expand on the embedded learning aspects of GHIS, and in the end, I will present some personal reflections about GHIS and interdisciplinarity.

TBC 
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