Background

“Last year I started the Bachelor Dutch Language and Culture, and before that I studied Psychology for a year. When I did Dutch Language and Culture I was looking for more psychology and statistics, so I found out quickly that Dutch was not for me. Initially, I liked it because I have a passion for language, but there was too much literature. Then I was looking for a new study, and when I saw the new Bachelor Cognition, Language and Communication (CLC) it was exactly what I wanted; a combination of psychology, cognition, and statistics. So that was very perfect.”

An interdisciplinary degree

“I like it a lot, we learn something from many different subjects. You can really contribute, instead of being forced into liking very specific things. For students it is mainly important that they choose something that interests them, whether that is interdisciplinary or something more specific. I believe that interdisciplinarity is important for academia in general. There are quite a few open questions. Some disciplines are already so well-researched, but if you bring them together it can create new questions, insights, and challenges. It is also a relatively new area of study. I notice this in teaching too; there is a lot of collaboration with the students. There is no right or wrong yet.”

Challenges

“When we are going to conduct our own research, then they tell us: “Choose a topic”. But in which area? It can go in any direction because it is so broad. That is nice, but it can also create confusion. I do believe, especially due to the guest lectures we had in the beginning of the year, that all students have found out now which direction they want to go in.”

Cognitive Science in the Humanities

“We recently became a Bachelor of Science. But CLC started with language and linguistics, and that really belongs to the humanities. And we also cover philosophy. On the other hand, I believe that we are so interdisciplinary, that we could have belonged anywhere. In the end, I think the Bachelor fits in within the Humanities, because language and communication are the central themes and we look at it from a cognitive perspective.”

SMART

“I like Speech & Language a lot, that has become ‘my thing’, but only in combination with Thought & Reasoning. I just find that combination just really interesting. Art & Music are not necessarily part of my interests, though there are CLC-students that want to go into musicology. But for me, the core topic is cognition and how it works.”

University of Amsterdam

“This may differ for each program, but within CLC there is a lot of involvement because we are such a small group. This group feeling is not just there between the students, but also with the lecturers. Because we are the first cohort we often get asked to help out or to give our opinion, for example for the advisory board. Then you become more than a student, we are CLC.”

Future

“That is a good question. I like Artificial Intelligence, especially modeling languages and exploring how this works for humans. Right from the beginning I thought this is a very solid method. I think I will always be involved with research, this is also what CLC aims at. But maybe I will not be a full-time researcher, I would also like to really make things.”