Research Master's Degree

The master's degree programs offered by CESI have:
(1) a theoretical and research dimension and
(2) a practical component, including documentation, research, and job shadowing in research, carried out in parallel over the course of the two-year program.
The second dimension takes shape through practical activities in scientific research laboratories, external specialized internships (documentation and research) and in individual or team-based practical workshops conducted in collaboration with supervising faculty members, organized through partnerships with public cultural institutions and non-profit organizations engaged in research and cultural-artistic creation.

Master's Degree Program SMS is unique in Romania due to its interdisciplinary modules: film studies, performance studies (across all media and forms, from theater to digital and societal performance), arts and technology, gender studies, and urban cultural studies.

Critical theory from the second half of the 20th century, although a major focus of the courses in this program, is revisited from the perspective of current issues that increasingly concern and involve us: societal clashes and upheavals, the urgency of transitioning to the “green city,” international conflicts, migration from war zones, and the dramatic transformations of natural ecosystems.

The research areas for the master’s program, developed over the course of four semesters, focus on the ways in which the arts and communities in the contemporary urban environment reflect and interpret these crises, as well as the ways in which artistic discourse engages with community life and education.

The master’s research program is internationally recognized precisely because of the relevance of the topics addressed, the multidisciplinary bibliographies, the variety of theoretical approaches and analytical methods, and the scientific creativity of the dissertations.

SD SITT/ CESI offers its master’s students the opportunity to create, through the intra-departmental transferable credit system, individual study paths and unique interdisciplinary specializations, accessing a shared platform of courses, research laboratories, and internships in the cultural and artistic fields, as well as a system of institutional partnerships for employment, collaborations, and personal projects. Each year, professors, researchers, and practitioners from diverse cultures and international academic backgrounds are invited to lecture as part of the courses.

The Scientific Circle CESI Digital Fellows hosts workshops, conferences, and debates organized exclusively by the student community, and solely for its benefit.

With the support of CESI, the master's students publish their own scientific journal, Visual Workbooks, and the most valuable dissertations are published in the author series of the CESI collection “Text and Image”.

The SMS master’s program prepares graduates for careers in the national and international cultural sector (theaters, film production companies, editing studios and labs, performing arts centers), in the tertiary sector of the cultural and creative industries, in the social sector, and in creative and/or communications departments, where interdisciplinary training in the fields of moving images and performance is an essential requirement for professional practice.

TPI Master's Degree Program approaches the artwork primarily as a cultural object, thereby integrating it into broad and nuanced networks of meaning and complex visual frameworks (both historical and contemporary) that encompass diverse heritage structures—such as museums, landmark buildings, landscape architecture, and eco-art installations.

The cultural phenomenon is approached from a critical-hermeneutic perspective; it is understood in a multi-contextual and mediological sense, as a process of transmission or transformation, of adding or negating codes and meanings. Visual cultural studies here include theories and applications regarding: collective memory and disruptive artistic imaginaries; literature, visual arts, and architectural imagery; urban cultural heritage, museology, and contemporary curatorial art.

Text (literary, documentary, theoretical, or philosophical), the visual arts and architectural ensembles, urban ceremonial, and art exhibition formats (exhibitions, biennials, festivals) are, in our view, first and foremost cultural testimonies; they represent sources of knowledge and understanding of the ways in which shifts in meaning occur, of processes of figuration and iconization, of tensions and ruptures, as well as of new stylistic forms, multi- or inter-media transfers, and the interpretive discourses associated with them. Cultural history thus combines with recent theories and interdisciplinary analyses, focusing on the relevance for today’s audiences of the relationship between text, image, art object, and cultural space.

SD SITT/ CESI offers its master’s students the opportunity to create, through the intra-departmental transferable credit system, individual study paths and unique interdisciplinary specializations, accessing a shared platform of courses, research laboratories, and internships in the cultural and artistic fields, as well as a system of institutional partnerships for employment, collaborations, and personal projects. Each year, professors, researchers, and practitioners from diverse cultures and international academic backgrounds are invited to lecture as part of the courses.

The Scientific Circle CESI Digital Fellows hosts workshops, conferences, and debates organized exclusively by the student community, and solely for its benefit.

With the support of CESI, the master's students publish their own scientific journal, Visual Workbooks, and the most valuable dissertations are published in the author series of the CESI collection “Text and Image”.

The TPI master’s program prepares graduates for careers in the government and national cultural sectors, the social sector, private firms, agencies, and corporations, in creative and/or communications departments, the non-governmental sector, and the tertiary sector of the cultural and creative industries, where interdisciplinary training in the field of visual arts is an essential requirement for professional practice.

The master's degree programs offered by CESI have:

1. a theoretical and research dimension and
2. a practical component, involving documentation, research, and job shadowing in a research setting, carried out in parallel over the course of the two-year program.

The second dimension takes shape through practical activities in scientific research laboratories, external specialized internships (documentation and research) and in individual or team-based practical workshops conducted in collaboration with supervising faculty members, organized through partnerships with public cultural institutions and non-profit organizations engaged in research and cultural-artistic creation.

ERASMUS+ CIVIS Study Mobility Programs
The University of Bucharest is a founding member of the CIVIS consortium, alongside the University of Aix-Marseille (France), the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece), the Free University of Brussels (Belgium), the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain), Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), Stockholm University (Sweden), and Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen (Germany).
In December 2020, the European Commission approved the University of Glasgow’s application to join the CIVIS university alliance as an associate partner, and in October 2021, Paris Lodron University (PLUS) in Salzburg became the alliance’s tenth member.
As of October 1, 2022, with the official accession of the University of Lausanne (UNIL), the CIVIS community has expanded to include 11 member universities.

ERASMUS+ (non-CIVIS) 2026–2027
The “Space, Image, Text, Territory” Doctoral School (SD SITT)/CESI Department announces the opening of applications for two ERASMUS+ scholarships for the 2026–2027 academic year, a selection process organized by partner universities (outside the CIVIS network). Depending on the score obtained, there will also be alternates (with the possibility of becoming regular students if a student declared a regular student withdraws or if funds become available). Students are invited to consult the list of options from which they can choose a faculty abroad, based on the profile of their own master’s or doctoral research program in which they are enrolled.

GENERAL SELECTION CRITERIA:

• passing a foreign language test / having proficiency in a foreign language;
• submitting a letter of intent or a cover letter in a foreign language;
• submission of a study plan for the chosen destination;
• submission of a resume in a foreign language (Europass format).

SD SITT/CESI's Own Selection Criteria:

• the topic of the master's/doctoral research thesis must be related to European culture;
• the research should be interdisciplinary within the field of Humanities and Arts.

Application materials should be submitted between March 16 and 31 to the following email address: simona.chiaburu@litere.unibuc.ro.

Online interview: April 7, starting at 10:00 a.m.