Call for applications: Master’s degrees in Art & Design

Reflections and investigations on contemporary issues through artistic and design research. Apply now for a two-year Master’s degree programme at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague, starting in September 2022. Our study programmes address contemporary issues and are led by a diverse and socially engaged faculty with international practices. Teaching takes the form of small-scale lectures, with a combination of practical and theoretical artistic research. After completing a Master’s degree, you can consider pursuing PhDArts, an international doctorate programme offered in close collaboration with Leiden University.

Our two-year master’s programmes in a nutshell: 

Master Artistic Research
Master Artistic Research educates artists to engage with contemporary issues and to explore how knowledge is held within aesthetic production. Teaching takes the form of practical and theoretical research. You create and exhibit your artistic work as you engage with the work of others. You develop academically through theory and writing courses. These elements are combined to sensitize you to the urgencies of our times, while close tutorial support helps you refine your individual point of view. 

Master ArtScience
Master ArtScience is offered in an interdisciplinary learning environment that fosters curiosity driven research as an approach for the making of art. Its interdisciplinary focus intersects the existing fields of music, visual arts, media art and other artistic disciplines, humanities and the natural sciences. The programme encourages students to question and reflect on current developments within the arts and sciences but also technological, social and political developments.

Master Industrial Design
Master Industrial Design educates designers who want to redesign industry. They question and redesign the conventions of the industrial system and envision more diverse and sustainable futures. We believe in the discursive and transformative potential of design and place design research at the heart of the programme. Aesthetically distinctive and outspoken products and projects are being developed based on research that defines the position of the designer in the professional field.

Master Interior Architecture (INSIDE)
At the heart of our education in the Master Interior Architecture is the idea that the interior architects’ real expertise lies in the relationship of people to their immediate living environment. In this relationship, a set of values such as sustainability and the concept of inclusion are becoming increasingly important and directly related to the urgent social and cultural tasks in the built environment. As a result, we are seeing the role of the interior architect outgrowing the physical interior space and becoming relevant to places where people come together. Whether these places are actually interiors is much less important than how designers position themselves within them as curators of spatial change.

Master Non Linear Narrative
Master Non Linear Narrative merges investigative methods of journalism and forensics. This is done using computer science and visual arts with a contemporary, avant-garde design approach: non-linear storytelling. The programme repositions graphic design in the changing professional landscape and extends it with new responsibilities towards society. Each year, a small group of master’s students, in collaboration with governmental and non-governmental institutions, undertake research and present new visual forms of narrative.

Master Photography & Society
Master Photography & Society educates socially engaged photographers who possess an interest in the technological, political, environmental and social role of the photograph. Our aim for photography is to develop relationships beyond its own disciplinary boundaries so as to comprehend the complex role of imagery within contemporary visual culture. We look at the image in two ways: as a material object and as a practice to envision alternative possibilities.

Conditions for admissions 2022/23
Apply online by May 1. After the first round of selection based on the examination of personal portfolios and research proposals, selected candidates will be invited to an (online) individual interview.