Please note that the course calendar may be subject to change.
Introductory courses
Period: Block 1 (September)
Credits: 5 ECTS
Course coordinators: Dr Anitra Baliga and Dr Bahar Sakizlioglu
Contemporary Debates in Urban Studies is an interdisciplinary Masters-level course that critically, and reflexively examines the contemporary landscapes of cities and urbanization worldwide. As urbanization accelerates and transforms societies, this course invites students to engage with the latest debates, theories, and challenges shaping urban life today. Across six thematic lectures and discussion-based tutorials, students will explore the evolving intellectual terrain of urban studies. The course examines how key conceptual frameworks from political economy and spatial theory to feminist and postcolonial perspectives intersect, conflict, and reconfigure what counts as urban knowledge. Students will be encouraged to question theoretical orthodoxies, engage with counter-hegemonic perspectives, and consider how new forms of urban thinking emerge from practice, and diverse epistemologies of place.
Period: Block 1 (October)
Credits: 5 ECTS
Course coordinators: Dr Jan Fransen and Dr Sofia Pagliarin
In the Urban Complexity course, participants learn how urban development tends to moves in path dependent processes, how resilience by adapting to change and shocks and features transformative change at distinct moments of time. As a consequence, cities do not develop in the same direction or at the same pace, nor do successful ‘recipes’ in one place work in another location. So, how can we understand this complexity and how can we harness it for a more aware urban development and management? During this course, students will learn to perceive cities as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), a theoretical perspective which aims to explain why cities evolve as self-organised dynamic networks, constantly adapting to uncertainty and shocks. Complexity sciences offer a conceptual tool to understand urban evolution by knitting (disciplinary) urban theory together.
Period: Block 1 (2 days in October)
Credits: 0,5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Dr Pamela Duran-Diaz and Carolina Lunetta
The Urban Resilience Workshop (ReWo) equips students with practical skills to diagnose complex urban conditions and develop resilience strategies. Cities face interconnected challenges such as climate-related hazards, infrastructure pressures, social vulnerabilities, and governance constraints. ReWo supports students in working with these realities in a structured way, combining diagnostic reasoning with strategy development in real-world contexts.
This intensive workshop introduces students to the City Resilience Framework (CRF) and its associated analytical tools, enabling them to systematically analyse urban conditions, identify priority challenges, and develop context-specific resilience strategies. Working in teams with real cities selected by the students themselves, the course emphasises evidence-based reasoning, cross-sectoral thinking, and the ability to translate analysis into actionable interventions.
The workshop combines collaborative practice with critical reflection. Students first engage in team-based exercises to apply resilience tools in real time. They subsequently complete an individual reflective assignment that evaluates the use, strength, and limitations of these tools, fostering deeper methodological understanding.
Period: Block 1 (November)
Credits: 2.5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Dr Paula Nagler
An increasing number of quantitative data sources covering urban areas at different scales has become available in recent years. This trend requires urban professionals to have the knowledge to understand such data and make sense out of them. This course introduces students to quantitative data analysis with a focus on understanding and assessing quantitative results. The course starts by introducing students to probability, statistical estimation, and hypothesis testing to explain how distributions in random samples behave and how likely observed results are when based on representative survey data. Hypothesis testing provides the basis for regression analysis. The course then proceeds to ordinary-leastsquares (OLS), a method used to estimate linear regression models, starting with simple regressions and progressing to multiple regression models. The course concludes with an overview of regression validity and a brief outlook on policy implications. The aim of this course is to equip students with a basic toolkit for understanding quantitative results in support of evidence-based policymaking. Emphasis is placed on interpreting results and translating quantitative research outcomes into policy-relevant conclusions.
Period: Block 1 (end-November - mid-December)
Credits: 2,5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Dr Bahar Sakizlioglu
This course introduces students to the design, practice, and analysis of qualitative research in the field of urban studies. It provides a compact but comprehensive foundation, covering both qualitative data collection and qualitative data analysis.
The course is structured in two integrated parts:
Qualitative Data Collection Methods:
Students will learn two main data collection methods in urban research: in-depth interviews, participatory urban observation. Each method will be discussed in terms of research design, sampling strategies, ethics, and the opportunities and limitations it offers in urban fieldwork. Through workshops, students will practice their skills and make exercises, developing practical experience in collecting qualitative data.
Qualitative Data Analysis for Urban Research
The second part introduces students to qualitative data analysis, more specifically to thematic analysis and coding as key approaches to making sense of qualitative data. Using CAQDAS (Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software), students will learn how to import, code, and interpret qualitative data in a structured and systematic way. Building on these foundations, the course also introduces students to the emerging role of GenAI in qualitative analysis. The students will critically explore how GenAI can assist with qualitative analysis. The emphasis will be on understanding both the opportunities and the limitations of GenAI in qualitative research, particularly in relation to validity, transparency, bias, and the interpretative role of the researcher.
Specialisation core modules
Period: Blocks 1&2 (November-February)
Credits: 10 ECTS
Course coordinators: Dr Qian Ke and Dr Paul Rabé
This course integrates hydrology, water engineering, and political ecology to examine water–land systems as integrated socio-technical and socio-ecological systems. From a hydrological perspective, students will explore water cycle processes and analyze how interactions between water, soil, and land operate across spatial and temporal scales. From an engineering perspective, students will examine how land-use patterns reshape hydrological behavior such as runoff generation, storage capacity, and flow pathways, and how these changes influence system performance. From a political ecology perspective, students will learn how and why water and land have traditionally been approached and managed separately—and how policy frameworks, planning decisions, and governance arrangements should ideally guide the transformation of water–land systems and shape long-term environmental outcomes.
Period: Blocks 1&2 (November-February)
Credits: 10 ECTS
Course coordinator: Dr Alexander Los
Please note that the content of this course will be published soon.
Additional courses
Period: Block 2 (January-March)
Course coordinator: Dr Anitra Baliga
The Master's programme at IHS includes a significant focus on designing and implementing academic research in urban studies. The Research Design (RD) course is essential for guiding students in creating academic research within the social sciences and independently developing their Master’s thesis. Alongside the two Methods and Analysis (Quantitative and Qualitative), the RD course equips students with the necessary skills and knowledge to design, implement, and compose a research project that meets the standards of a Master’s thesis.
Period: Block 2 (TBD)
Course coordinator: Dr Alexander Los
Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, allow to capture and analyse geographic data and spatial information easily and efficiently. Already decades ago their usefulness and popularity prompted companies as well as the open source community to develop high-level GIS software solutions, applicable to many disciplines and publicly accessible (QGIS is ahigh-level open-source tool, used in this course).
GIS tools include plenty of possibilities to process, analyse and visualise quantitative as well as qualitative information typically used in research in the social sciences. This course will explain frequently used GIS techniques and demonstrate their applicability across typical cases covered in the Master's programme. With lectures, examples and point-and-click instructions, you will learn how to create new insights for your research by solving geographic problems with GIS tools.
Advanced research methods
Period: Block 2 (February)
Credits: 5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Dr Paula Nagler
Urban and public policy decisions increasingly require credible evidence on causal effects: whether interventions work, for whom, and under what conditions. Simple correlations are insufficient for answering such questions, particularly in complex urban settings.
This course provides students with training in impact evaluation and causal inference, equipping them with the econometric and research-design tools needed to identify causal effects in applied policy contexts. The course explicitly distinguishes causal inference from descriptive and predictive analysis, highlighting the assumptions required for credible identification.
Period: Block 2 (February)
Credits: 5 ECTS
Course coordinators: Dr Beatriz Calzada Olvera and Dr Alberto Gianoli
As cities and societies become increasingly digitalised, policy analysis relies on large and complex datasets (e.g., administrative records, satellite imagery, sensors, and digital platforms). Machine-learning (ML) methods offer powerful tools for prediction and pattern detection, but they also raise challenges related to interpretation, validation, and their distinction from causal inference.
This course provides students with a solid foundation in statistical learning for policy-relevant analysis, explicitly bridging econometric inference and machine-learning approaches. Students learn when ML methods are appropriate, how they differ from causal approaches, and how they can be responsibly applied in policy and urban research contexts.
The course builds on a shared quantitative core – multiple regression, limited dependent variable models, panel data, and instrumental variables – before introducing regularisation methods, tree-based models, and validation techniques. Emphasis is placed on critical assessment, academic application, and policy relevance, rather than purely technical optimisation.
Period: Block 2 (February)
Credits: 5 ECTS
Course coordinators: Dr Bahar Sakizlioglu and Dr Sofia Pagliarin
The advanced methods course Comparative urban research introduces students to comparative research from a conceptual and methodological point of view, and tailors it to the specific challenges and characteristics of comparative urban research. First, the course discusses different traditions and approaches to comparison and their implications for what, how and why we compare, including the most used comparative research designs. Second, the course offers training on two main methodological approaches for comparative urban research, namely multiple case studies and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Students will learn how to perform conceptually and methodologically rigorous multiple case studies research, and will learn both the conceptual and basic technical skills to perform Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) by using R.
Building on prior training in qualitative methods and research design, students engage in critical reading, discussion and hands-on workshops. As an advanced methods course, the Comparative urban research course helps students develop the skills to design a feasible and theoretically grounded comparative framework for their thesis projects and
equips them with basic practical skills to perform empirical comparative research for their thesis. As comparative research is often interdisciplinary, we will discuss what this entails for students when engaging in comparative work for their theses, especially regarding the collection and triangulation of different sources and types of data.
Period: Block 2 (February)
Credits: 5 ECTS
Course coordinators: Dr Pamela Durán-DÃaz and Dr Maartje van Eerd
This course equips students with the knowledge and skills to design and conduct participatory and action-oriented research in urban management and development. It provides a critical understanding of how research can move beyond extractive practices to become a tool for co-creation, reciprocity, and locally grounded impact. Students will learn to design research that is ethically responsible, contextually relevant, and collaborative, laying the foundation for their thesis fieldwork in the PBS. The course is also relevant beyond the thesis, as it equips students with skills they need as urban managers, that is to link research to urban management.
The module addresses the ethical and political challenges of conducting research in the Global South and elsewhere. It explicitly engages with questions of power, positionality, and neocolonial legacies in urban research, preparing students to approach communities not as objects of study but as partners in knowledge production. Students will be encouraged to reflect on their own role as researchers and to design research processes that create value for the communities involved.
Focal points
Period: Block 2 (March)
Credits: 5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Elena Marie Enseñado
Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) are systemic placed-based interventions that protect, restore, or sustainably manage ecosystems to address interlinked societal challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, water management, food security, and human well-being. By working with ecological processes, NBS, such as wetland restoration or green corridors, can generate multiple environmental, social, and economic co-benefits.
This course critically examines the conceptual, ecological, socio-political, governance, and financial dimensions of NBS, with a particular focus on their role in transformative sustainability transitions. Students engage with theoretical frameworks, empirical cases, and applied tools to assess how NBS can be designed, governed, financed, and mainstreamed in ways that are socially just, ecologically sound, and institutionally feasible across scales.
Period: Block 2 (March)
Course coordinators: Dr Alonso Ayala and Dr Maartje van Eerd
Please note that the content of this course will be published soon.
Period: Block 2 (March)
Credits: 5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Dr Alberto Gianoli
Circular economy has been receiving increasing attention worldwide as a way to overcome the current production and consumption model based on continuous growth and increasing resource throughput. The module on the transition to circular urban economy explores the interaction between transition theory and circularity, providing both theoretical and practical insights. The module also delves into the paradoxes faced during the transition to circular economy (e.g. rebound effect with increased efficiency leading to increased consumption, conflict between economic growth and sustainability, balancing short-term and long-term goals), and the different potential tensions such as technological (e.g. scalability, technological lock-ins), economic (e.g. market acceptance, business model innovation), social and cultural challenges (e.g. behavioural change, customer buy-in).
Period: Block 2 (March)
Credits: 5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Dr David Dodman and Dr Paul Rabe
Climate justice provides an appropriate conceptual framing to assess, understand, analyse – and ultimately address – these consequences of differential climate impacts and responses. The module also engages with literature on intersectionality and decolonial urban practices as means of understanding the underlying urban processes that shape risk and responses to it. Empirically, the course pays particular attention to cities in the Global South, and to residents of informal settlements, but also engages with inequality and risk in European and North American cities.
Thesis period
Designing and implementing academic research in the field of urban studies is a major component of the master's programme at IHS. During this period students will write their master thesis on their chosen topic guided by a supervisor.