Student testimonial

There are many possibilities here on campus, it's only a matter of going after it yourself

International Development Studies: Economics of Development
Previous education: Leiden University College the Hague

I experienced my subjects as quite personal, where the professor actually knows the name of you and your fellow students. In the end, this also comes in handy when choosing a thesis supervisor or subject, for example.
Lauren Wessel, International Development Studies student

I have a bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts & Sciences: Global Challenges from Leiden University College the Hague (LUC), where I focused on political economics and development studies. Although I found this extremely interesting, I was still looking for a less theoretical study for my master's degree. In my gap year, I had a great deal of doubt between development economics in Copenhagen, Lund, London and the WUR. In the end, I chose WUR because of the combination of research and practice. There are many research institutes on the campus, and much of the research carried out by my instructors is fairly application-oriented. I also found the interface between development and other themes Wageningen is known for, such as food security and climate change, very interesting.

The transition from LUC to WUR was easy. My bachelor's degree was demanding, so the transition to a master's degree did not feel like a big difference. I did have to get used to courses with sometimes more than 200 students; for a statistical course in my first block I couldn't just raise my hand every time I had a question. Fortunately this was one of the few courses where this was the case. I experienced my other subjects as quite personal, where the professor actually knows the name of you and your fellow students. In the end, this also comes in handy when choosing a thesis supervisor or subject, for example.

There are many possibilities here on campus, it's only a matter of going after it yourself. During my first year I worked as a research assistant at one of the research programmes on campus. I also just returned from an internship at SNV in Kenya, which I heard about through a teacher.

At the moment I am thinking about what I want to research during my thesis. I will probably be joining a research project in Sierra Leone, but I'm not entirely sure about that yet. The same goes for my career. I would like to do something with policy-science engagement, or work for an NGO or development bank. But who knows, I might also go into politics or become more activist. I like a lot of things, so it's hard to choose!