Social Sciences Department

The Social Sciences Department in AAUP has some distinguish programs that reflect the needs of the Palestinian market of the experiences and skills that contribute in serving the community, its organizations and local and formal institutions. The department offers four excellent one of its kind Masters’ programs and one PhD program in Conflict Resolution which is the first of its kind in Palestine. The master’s programs of this department are:

• Master in Conflict Resolution which is the one of its kind that the Faculty of Graduate Studies in AAUP offers. The program analyzes the conflict causes, the modern foundations and ways to analyze conflicts, conflict theories, negotiations, mediation and arbitration.
• Master in Middle Eastern Studies, which is considered as one of the special programs in the Middle East area and the international relations related to the area.
• Master in Intercultural Communication and Literature, which is the first of its kind in the Faculty of Graduate Studies in AAUP, and it focuses mainly on the relation between culture and literature, the theoretical and practical ways of communication.
• Master in Arabic Language and Literature.
• Master in Conflict Resolution
• Master in International Relations
• Master in Translation
• Ph.D. in Conflict Resolution
• Ph.D. in International Political Economy
• Ph.D. in International Relations
• Ph.D. in Sociology

The department deals and solves many of the social, political and contemporary literature cases that are related to the local and international topics and related to the Palestinian and Arab community. Courses are lectured by some excellent professors who are specialized in the social sciences and the international relations.

Despite the difference focus of these programs, but there are some common elements in the design of each program. By taking the courses of each program, students will learn the basic and most important theories for each topic, the historical roots, and the conflict about it. In addition, students will learn how theories and the theoretical and philosophical concepts started, and how it evaluated and changed during time.

Goals

1. Provide researchers with political and literal knowledge, theoretically and practically, according to modern theories and methodologies, and encourage them to prepare studies and researches to increase the academic scientific content in this field especially to focus on the legal and political problems of the society.
2. Graduate a new Palestinian generation specialized in international studies and conflict resolution and development, in addition to prepare them to understand the contemporary literal studies, the culture dialogue and the culture and scientific collaboration.
3. Take leadership responsibility in establishing and managing the public and private sectors.
4. Graduate a group of elite researchers capable to use their gained knowledge and skills in serving their local society and activate their social role to be able to blend in the labor market.
5. Enhance the culture dialogue and the capability to deal with other cultures to expand the scientific and culture collaboration with the outside.
6. Provide the Palestinian society with studies and researches that will enhance in resolving its social issues.  

International and Local Partnerships

Since its establishment, the department was keen to start and build number of international and local partnerships such as the partnership with Cordoba Private University, Universidad de Granada, University of Flensburg, and Coventry University in Britain. These partnership relations enhanced in opening new academic programs that fulfilled the Palestinian society and market needs.

The department also focuses on the community activities as it provides services to the local community and offers public lectures under collaboration with the Conflict Resolution Center in AAUP. It also provides training programs in the conflict resolution field, the international relations, diplomacy, media, press, and sustainable conflict resolution, and some of the department professors are also members of community and formal committees.

The social sciences department teaches its lectures in smart classrooms available at the faculty as this enables professors to do joint and interactive lectures with other graduate studies students in American and European universities using the Conference Call and Distance Learning way. This way enables students to communicate live with each other’s and have a fruitful discussion about the joint issues.

Focusing on the Quality

Aiming to focus on providing high quality programs to students, the department put a modern way to evaluate the program and guarantee its quality, by having a continuous communication with other centers, universities and organizations in order to evaluate the academic programs that the department offers, and provide a higher education with international standards. The quality assurance unit prepares a regular internal assessment about the courses offered, to guarantee using some learning and evaluation techniques.