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Cross-Disciplinary Strategies (CDS) provides the opportunity to work on current societal challenges in a multidisciplinary degree programme, linking the approaches and methodologies of art, the humanities and social and natural sciences. In this sense, the programme is a reaction to the increasing fragmentation of academic disciplines, aiming to face up to 21st century challenges. Artistic strategies and approaches to art are our common disciplinary language.
 

Bachelor

The introductory year covers principles of programming, statistics, academic work in the form of research and text production, as well as the principles of human rights, the structure of international organisations, artistic practices and current discourses in social sciences and humanities.

In subsequent years of the programme, the curriculum is structured into the study areas science and technology, economics and politics, and artistic strategies and approaches to art with annual topics that deal with global challenges such as migration, medialisation, work, growth, environment, and nutrition. In this phase, students apply knowledge from their content lectures in cross-disciplinary projects in team work. The programme aims to enable students to identify and uncover complex correlations, and to integrate them into cooperative processes of action.
 

Qualification profile

Graduates employ artistic skills, strategies and principles of artistic praxis and experience, plus broad knowledge regarding the basic principles of research from the areas of natural sciences, humanities and social sciences to identify, develop and bring about systematic and innovative approaches for the achievement of sustainable transformation and design processes. Graduates gain an understanding for the complex coherences of our globalized and tightly interwoven societies and are able to take a critical stance towards the multiple challenges of our time.

Graduates pass through awareness-raising and qualification processes that will enable them:

• to identify and address relevant issues and strategies for change processes beyond the boundaries of disciplines
• to systemize and communicate (knowledge transfer) the approaches developed, and to implement them according to the requirements of the respective context
• to instruct and guide interdisciplinary work teams that are characterized by diversity and heterogeneity.

Due to the architecture of the study programme students have at their command a number of artistic skills and strategies, as well as interdisciplinary knowledge in respect of the basic principles of highly diverse knowledge areas, all of which facilitates a certain foresight and at the same time provides a high adaptability to a wide range of disciplines.
 

Master

In particular, the master's programme promotes work on transdisciplinary projects for sustainable social change and a cross-disciplinary approach to digital technologies and the transformation processes associated with them.

Students learn to situate their topics in a broader societal context and, in addition, to communicate them using a range of methods and artistic strategies and to apply these in cross-disciplinary, participative projects.

The Angewandte's highly practice-related academic and artistic teaching and its range of workshops gives the programme an experimental framework in which students are supported in developing their own individual practice. Every semester offers the opportunity to apply the knowledge gained in independent cross-disciplinary projects. For these projects, dialogue and collaboration with actors of civil society, art, science, politics and the economy are supported and promoted.

The programme aims to engage graduates of the Cross-Disciplinary Strategies bachelor programme and any graduates of other fields who would like to supplement their specialist knowledge and place it in a new context. Graduates of all other fields with a bachelor’s or other advanced degree and proof of English proficiency to a level B2 (CEFR) are invited to apply to the CDS master’s programme.
 

Qualification profile

Graduates of the Cross-Disciplinary Strategies master's programme are equipped:

• to apply academic and artistic approaches to cross-disciplinary work, and to apply this expertise in projects and in practice. They link theory and practice and can provide the necessary content and methodology for this purpose
• to find innovative and creative solutions for problematic issues using a practical cross-disciplinary approach, to advise and lead interdisciplinary working teams that are diverse and heterogenous, and to develop cross-disciplinary research approaches

Graduates have a good grasp of the principles of software development and have practice in dealing with data for statistical analysis, machine learning and visualisation.

Graduates are equipped:

• to initiate and carry out collaborative work with a range of interest groups
• to apply artistic strategies and to communicate the principles of artistic practice
• to carry out academic and scientific work both independently and in teams.