Gender Studies is an academic discipline with deep roots and an enormous resonance in the contemporary world. The field is constantly developing, and new research themes, journals and programs keep emerging, testifying to the profound and far-reaching significance of the knowledge produced. At the same time, we also witness a huge backlash against feminisms, women’s rights, LGBTQI rights, and Gender Studies themselves – from attempts to ban abortion rights and the establishment of so-called “LGBTQ free zones” in EU countries, to the use of the term “gender ideology” to reject basic scientific insights about sex and gender, and official refusals to recognize Gender Studies as an academic discipline.
In this broader context, the Department of Gender Studies at CEU strives to meet the growing demand for knowledge and expertise in gender issues by providing both Master's and doctoral level programs in Gender Studies, as well as serving as a base for non-degree studies and other activities in the field. On the Master’s level we offer a one-year MA degree and a two-year MA in Critical Gender Studies, and we are partners in MATILDA (two-year European MA in Women’s and Gender History) and GEMMA (two-year Erasmus Mundus Master´s Degree in Women's and Gender Studies). In addition, we offer a PhD in Comparative Gender Studies. Gender Studies faculty also teach in the CEU’s new BA programs.
The Department attracts students from a wide range of disciplines, mainly but not exclusively in the social sciences and the humanities, and focuses on integrative and comparative approaches in Gender Studies. The Department emphasizes a rich variety of scholarly interests that interrogate gender and sexuality as they are intertwined with (post) state-socialisms, nationalism and conflict, migration and borders, labor and care work, postcolonial and decolonial feminisms, posthuman and animal studies, cultural studies and literature, transnationalism, and international political movements, often with a historical dimension.
Both the Master's and doctoral programs seek to contribute to the development of socially relevant knowledge based on these approaches, and to critically interrogate past and present developments related to gender in culture and society.
Central European University is an international university in the truest sense: its students come from over 100 countries of five continents; its faculty comes from more than 30 countries – with the mix of nationalities increasing every year. The university’s unique combination of American, European and regional intellectual and academic traditions enables CEU to place emphasis on the shifting boundary between the local and the global in both the theoretical and the practical aspects of its research and teaching.
CEU is a founding member of the European University Association (EUA), and is accredited both in the USA and Europe (Austria). In this way, CEU brings together the best of two renowned educational traditions. As part of CEU, the Department of Gender Studies is proud of its participation in European and other international academic and scholarly networks.