Sem Oosse

In 2017, I was lucky enough to do my internship in the United States. My term abroad coincided with the inauguration of Trump as president and I so got to experience the polarised political landscape firsthand. These experiences inspired me with a sense of wonder. What drives political polarization? How can the success of an anti-establishment figure like Trump be explained? And what determines people’s political preferences? After some orientation, I found the Master of Politics & Society and determined that this was the master that would most probably provide the tools for answering these questions. I was not disappointed!

Through highly interactive and small-scale lectures and tutorials, I learned to dissect socio-political puzzles like the surge of right-wing populism, the decline in political trust and the rise of Euroscepticism. I learned to approach these socio-political puzzles from different angles by analyzing their individual, contextual and institutional determinants. This left me with a broad understanding of the factors that help explain these phenomena. I furthermore learned how to analyze these often socially controversial topics through a scientific and objective lens. The programme taught me that, as a social-scientific researcher, it is not about judging individuals for having certain political preferences, but about uncovering and understanding the social factors that shape these preferences. This has not only made me a better researcher, but also a more understanding and open-minded individual. This scientific approach to analyzing complex socio-political phenomena will prove beneficial in the remainder of my academic and professional career.