LLM Governance and Law in Digital Society

What role does the government play in digital society? And what impact does this have on the public sector? How should we approach issues of cybercrime from a legal and organizational perspective?

Recent advances in digitization have resulted in an increasing number of parties becoming involved in security issues. 'Security and digitization' is, after all, not restricted to cybercrime and thus affects both the police and courts of law. It is also concerned with issues of surveillance and the maintenance of law and order, including online as well as offline public order. Government agencies have to decide which strategies to adopt in order to deal with such obstacles and issues brought about by digitization. In the job market, there is a clear demand for graduates with an interdisciplinary profile capable of interpreting developments in digital society and responding to them accordingly. This Master's programme is designed to meet this demand and prepare students for a career in this field.

In this programme, you will work intensively with university partners in both the private and public sectors, to gain insight into the real-life problems that organizations encounter. You will gain practical experience in working in a public context in the field of problems related to digitization. Graduates of the programme will be well equipped to discuss and tackle such problems, whether in academic research or in political or governmental organizations or the business world.

Job prospects

Graduates of this programme go on to work in a variety of positions in the public sector. Career opportunities lie not only with traditional authorities such as ministries or provincial and local governments but particularly also in organizations surrounding them: agencies, independent governing bodies, inter-municipal and regional organizations, European and international organizations and in the business world. Take, for example, the National Police, departments of ministries such as the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, the Public Prosecution Service, the Special Investigative Services and private parties who work together with public organizations.

Admission Requirements

Language requirements

If you are not a native speaker of English, you will need to provide proof of your English proficiency. Acceptable test scores are:

• TOEFL: 92 (all sections need to be at least 21; the writing section needs to be at least 23)
• IELTS: 6.5 (all sections need to be at least 6.0; the writing section needs to be at least 6.5)
• CAE or CPE
• Applicants who are taking/have completed an English-taught bachelor programme at a Dutch research university are exempt from taking an English proficiency test.

If you have taken or plan to take an English language test that is not listed here, please contact us for more information.

Previous education

You will need a Law degree and a GPA equivalent to 7/10 on a Dutch grading scale to qualify for this programme. Furthermore, you will need to provide an academic reference, your curriculum vitae, and a motivation letter. For details about the admission requirements, please see the Master in Law admission requirements on our website.

A helpful indication of the required knowledge for this programme:

• knowledge minimum law: basic knowledge of administrative law, constitutional law, property law, and contract law plus elementary knowledge of the public international law and/or European law.
• knowledge minimum social science: basic knowledge of social science research methodology, a theory of social science, policy studies, and organization studies.

Application deadlines (course starts September 1, 2019)

• EU/EEA students: May 1, 2019
• Non-EU/EEA students: May 1, 2019

Tuition fees

• EU/EEA students: € 2083
• non-EU/EEA students: € 14600