Members of the faculty of Arts are preparing to welcome the inaugural cohort of students to the newly created MA program in Social and Political Thought (SPT@Acadia).  “This is an exciting venture for faculty members in Arts” says Program Director, Professor Marc Ramsay (Philosophy), “especially since the MA in SPT@Acadia is one of only four in Canada and the first of its kind in the Atlantic Region, so we’re breaking new ground.  We’re delighted to welcome these students with a remarkably broad range of interests, willing to take up the intellectual challenge of interdisciplinary scholarship, where ideas matter and critical thinking is encouraged”. Drawing on students from Vancouver to Nova Scotia, the first cohort of students bring with them primary degrees in Anthropology, Geography, Philosophy and Political Science, with research interests in areas as diverse as war, corporate power, human rights, cultural studies, and environmentalism.
 
The MA in SPT@Acadia is not a run of the mill MA program, it is designed to offer students a supportive and personalized environment, with small class sizes and a degree of student-faculty interaction that is rare for MA students in Canada.  “At bigger schools, MA students tend to get very little time with their professors, they can easily get lost in the shuffle, especially when they’re lumped together with PhD students and often left to fend for themselves” says Prof. Ramsay, “with SPT@Acadia we’re offering a very different kind of MA experience, where students get a lot of face time with faculty, which we believe is the best way to develop intellectually rigorous and engaging research projects”.
 
The MA in SPT@Acadia draws on faculty from Comparative Religion, Economics, Philosophy, Political Science and Sociology who aim to build SPT@Acadia as a regional leader in innovative social and political analysis, comparable to the world-renowned SPT programs at York University and the University of Victoria.  Please address any inquiries to Professor Marc Ramsay by email (mramsay@acadiau.ca) or phone (902.585.1261).