Croatology

There is no doubt that within our academic community there is a need for a profile of education that approaches Croatian culture, in all its complex layers, openly and from the perspective of various traditional humanities disciplines concerned with it. Building on diverse graduate backgrounds, students in this doctoral programme are prepared for scientific research by becoming acquainted, with the support of qualified teachers, with the fundamental issues of other disciplines relevant to the understanding of Croatian culture as a whole.

Such an approach provides a starting point for future research that differs from the perspective offered by any single discipline on its own. The delivery of such teaching encourages interdisciplinary approaches in thinking and research to a far greater extent than has previously been the case. To achieve this, the programme builds on existing academic potential and makes use of the opportunities already available.

Teachers who have qualified for academic positions within established humanities disciplines, and who are open to this kind of thinking, provide students with knowledge that broadens and rounds out their intellectual horizons. This creates the preconditions for the development of concrete interdisciplinary interventions, while creative cooperation and constructive dialogue make it possible to formulate, develop, test, and compare diverse models of interdisciplinarity, without dogmatically prescribing any theoretical approach in advance.

For such a lasting interdisciplinary workshop, that is, for a community of teachers and students oriented towards the study of Croatian culture, it is necessary to establish the appropriate conditions and organisational framework. Creating a positive and stimulating academic environment is therefore one of the primary purposes of the interdisciplinary doctoral programme in Croatology.

Within the programme, students from different graduate backgrounds acquire additional knowledge and new insights through lectures, including those related to their own fields of expertise. Through discussions and consultations, they develop a coherent and purposeful interdisciplinary approach to the topic each of them investigates and analyses. In this way, from the very outset, and by relying on existing but still partly underused academic potential, the programme opens up a new dimension of interdisciplinarity in the study and interpretation of phenomena of Croatian culture.

It is expected that continuous progress in this field will be achieved over time, which is particularly important within the humanities. In accordance with the provisions of the Act on Scientific Activity and Higher Education, the interdisciplinary doctoral programme in Croatology is organised at the Faculty of Croatian Studies as a regular university doctoral programme leading to the degree of Doctor of Science in the field of interdisciplinary sciences.