Transdisciplinary Studies in the Arts: Information evening

The master’s programme in Transdisciplinary Studies in the Arts at Zurich University of the Arts links disciplines in the arts and design, the sciences and society. It enables students to work in cooperative constellations and to develop suitable processes and formats based on interdisciplinary methods.

At information evening, Irene Vögeli and Patrick Müller (Co-Heads of Studies) will introduce the programme together with students, followed by an informal exchange. The event will be held in a hybrid format on November 18, at 6:30pm (CET). For Zoom participation, please register here.

Application deadline for studies: February 16, 2027.

The Transdisciplinary Studies in the Arts programme (120 ECTS) responds to contemporary social, cultural and political issues that transvers disciplinary boundaries. Addressing these issues requires approaches that take into account different disciplines and perspectives.

This practice-based master's programme enables students to position themselves at the intersection of different fields by  integrating artistic processes and/or aesthetic strategies into transdisciplinary projects and constellations. Their own practices and subject areas provide the starting point for the transdisciplinary expansion of established art forms and disciplines and for connecting theoretical positions with innovative forms of practice.

Three approaches designate subject areas to which the programme's courses are aligned. They outline areas of thought and fields of inquiry in which disciplinary orders are questioned, broken up or transcended.

Other places, other ways of working, other publics: Theatre makers leave the stage and work in the landscape; visual artists form collectives and create meeting spaces in social hotspots; musicians deal with natural and everyday sounds and seek an audience outside of concert halls. Disciplinary boundaries are marked by rules that materialise in traditional divisions of labour and defined spaces. These rules are up for discussion. The approach critiques institutional frameworks and the hierarchies and exclusionary effects. The debate centres on how to work with spatial, social and natural-cultural conditions, how to involve the previously excluded and how to form alternative ecologies and economies. Questions concerning concepts of authorship and experimentation with different forms of collaboration (including non-human actors) are part of this approach.

Forms of knowledge and thought practices in the arts and elsewhere: Knowing the possibilities and limits of one’s own discipline, questioning one’s own certainties and contextualising them form an essential basis for transdisciplinary project work. A transdisciplinary approach is based on the diversity and equality of different worldviews and investigates types of knowledge that help people orient themselves in the present and face its problems under various circumstances. Courses taking this approach critically examine the supremacy of scientific and supposedly objective knowledge, ask about the politics of dominant and marginalised forms of knowledge, negotiate the position of art and aesthetics in the formation, organisation and distribution of knowledge, and test possible connections between theoretical work and artistic practice.

Mediators and hybrids: figures of the in-between: Anyone working transdisciplinarily shifts artistic and creative processes, techniques and formats, media and ways of speaking or concepts into other contexts where they have to be (re)negotiated and scrutinised for their transferability. During these transfer processes, a nebulousness arises that can hardly be grasped with the usual categorical grids. The focus is on constellations with the prefix “trans-” that transcend disciplinary, specialised, medial or culturally influenced paradigms, bring these paradigms into negotiation or mediate between them. In this approach, concepts, projects and formats that defy categorisation into defined genres and thus open up new spaces for thought and negotiation are discussed and tested.

Zurich University of the Arts is a vibrant centre for teaching, research, and production. Firmly anchored in Greater Zurich, our influence extends internationally. We offer degree programmes in education, design, film, art and media, dance, theatre, music, and transdisciplinary studies. Closely interrelating teaching and research, we provide an ideal setting for transdisciplinary projects. Committed to bridging higher education, professional practice, and the wider public, we showcase our faculty’s and students’ works in our own exhibition spaces and performance venues.