Pre-master Leisure and Tourism Studies

The programme consists of two semesters. In the first semester you will take several theoretical courses, you will learn how to conduct research and you will work on a real-life project. In the second semester you will again take a number of courses, start with qualitative and quantitative data analysis and conduct research for your final project.

Semester 1

Labour, Care and Leisure
People want a career, quality time with their families and fulfilling leisure activities. This course addresses the underlying causes and consequences of this balancing act.

Sociology of Leisure
This course focuses on the basic principles of sociology in order to understand the role of leisure in our society, for instance how we learn to become part of our society through sports or volunteering.

Research Methods – Surveys
This course offers you the methodological and statistical competencies necessary to become a competent researcher, specifically for survey research.

Real-Life Project
During this project, you will apply the techniques from the course in Research Methods - Surveys to design and conduct a survey for a commissioner in the leisure field.

Research Lab
This is a virtual environment in which you work on academic writing and qualitative research knowledge and skills.

Semester 2

Leisure and Urban Development
This course explores the causes and consequences of the increased importance of leisure, culture
and creativity in the development, quality and experience of places and eventful cities.

Innovation and Change
In this course you will learn about organisational change, innovation and change management and sustainable value creation in leisure organisations.

Research Methods - Data Analysis
This course explores many common data analysis techniques for the social sciences: regression, ANOVA, factorial designs, path analysis modelling and non-parametric statistics.

Bachelor’s Thesis
You answer research questions on leisure behaviour by doing quantitative or qualitative research.

The academic pre-master Leisure and Tourism Studies is a one-year, full-time programme. The total study load is 60 ECTS credits. To give you an idea: 1 ECTS credit = approximately 28 hours of study a week.

We offer you a small-scale study environment as the number of students involved in the pre-master's track are limited. For questions on the content of the programme, lecturers can be easily reached. In addition, the programme coordinator is available to help with day-to-day issues. If you wish to discuss personal problems that may be affecting your life as a student, you can turn to the student counsellor.