Netherlands

BSc. PPE, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands

Welcoming its students since September 2016, the Philosophy, Politics and Economics programme at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam offers thorough knowledge of the three core disciplines and teaches students to apply them in an integrated way. The student body is highly diverse, with over 50% international students, all selected based on academic performance, motivation, and English proficiency. Our small-scale and intensive education, coupled with exclusive facilities at the John Stuart Mill College, offers a personalized and highly interactive learning experience. The five “PPE in Practice” courses provide an interdisciplinary policy-oriented approach to the most pressing global issues, and students are encouraged to expand their horizons through a mandatory semester abroad or internship. Finally, a Nobel prize-winning algorithm ensures a successful thesis team match, culminating in a unique and rewarding final thesis trajectory.

PPE Groningen, Netherlands

We have a research center and a one-year master program. Both are hosted within the Faculty of Philosophy, with strong links to the Faculty of Economics and Business, but also collaborations with colleagues in sociology, law, etc. We attempt to offer an integrated program with a number of mandatory core courses and a large set of electives. In the PPE Center, we regularly hold colloquia, workshops, book workshops, and other events, and host visiting scholars (if you are interested in a stay, contact the director at l.m.herzog@rug.nl). The Center is run by an interdisciplinary board and has a broad membership among faculty members and PhD students. 

PPE Utrecht University, Netherlands  

Having opened its door in 2018, PPE College offers a small-scale, selective Bachelor Degree program for 75 students per cohort. It combines four disciplines (Politics, Philosophy, Economics and History) with a special emphasis on systematically training students how to think and do research in an interdisciplinary (rather than a multidisciplinary) way, through interdisciplinary co-teaching and skills weeks dedicated to interdisciplinary skills, amongst others. The students form a tight-knit international community (around 65% of our students are international) with a vibrant extracurricular programme. All teaching staff are members of one of the four participating PPE departments. A team of 12 core teachers (3 from each department) forms the heart of the academic team, teaching in all three years, serving as tutors and partaking in further developing the program. The programme is steered by a Board with one member from each of the four participating departments. In 2022 we launched our first annual PPE conference for academics working in the PPE field at UU. Since 2024, this conference is also open for participation by colleagues beyond UU, as well as by alumni who present gradudate research.

Research Master Philosophy and Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam

The Research Master is a two year programme in the analytic philosophy of economics offered by the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (EIPE), which holds regular seminars and hosts visiting scholars. EIPE also hosts the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics. To my knowledge, the programme is the oldest masters programme in the world that offers this specialist focus. The programme is small-scale (30 students) and intensive. Students take core courses in the four main subfields of the discipline: methodology of economics, decision and rationality, ethics and economics and the history of economic thought. Students then take a range of specialized philosophy of economics courses (e.g. on deliberative democracy, social choice theory, capitalism, the philosophy and economics of climate change, modelling cooperative and group decisions). Students can also take some courses from the Erasmus School of Economics, with which we have strong ties.