Extra opportunities
For students looking for an extra challenge in addition to their Master's, there are several options. 
Honouring your curiosity
Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ offers several honours programmes for students looking for an extra avenue to explore their curiosity and foster their personal development. Honours education is followed on top of your regular Master’s programme. Both faculty-specific and university-wide honours programmes are offered.
Faculty Honours programmes
Faculty-specific honours programmes offer more depth to your learned subject matter. Here, you’ll have more time to focus on personal and professional development opportunities within your field. Your degree offers the following faculty-specific honours programmes:
For highly motivated students Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ’s School of Law offers an honours programme; The LLM’s Honours Programme:
- Are you looking for extra academic depth and challenge during your LLM?
- Are personal and professional development key for you?
- Do you want to establish professional contacts that contribute substantially to your learning process?
- Are you looking to develop your professional lawyering and research skills in a legal clinic setting?
The Honours Programme is designed for excellent, motivated, and enthusiastic students who want to enrich their master’s studies. This is an Honours Programme pursued in addition to the regular master’s programme. It focuses on academic depth and opportunities for personal and professional development. Learn more about the .
Are you looking to develop your professional lawyering and research skills in a legal clinic setting? Then the PIL Clinical Programme might be something for you. As part of the monthly meetings, you take part in lawyering and research skills trainings. You subsequently learn to apply these skills to the subject matter of your own LLM by producing legal and policy memoranda for real clients, acting under the supervision of a lecturer.
ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ-wide honours programmes
In these interdisciplinary programmes, you can let your diverse interests run wild as you work on varying social and academic issues together with students from other disciplines. By analysing issues from different perspectives, you’ll learn how to navigate complex societal issues through a broader lens.
In an increasingly interconnected world, learning how to work with people from different fields is a vital skill. After completing these honours programmes you will receive an honours certificate during a festive ceremony. The following programmes are offered:
Today’s global and local challenges are becoming more complex, often feeding into more broad and dynamic collaborations. The is designed for open-minded students who want to develop interdisciplinary research skills that help combat these complicated challenges.
During a series of small-scale seminars led by leading UU researchers, GHIS facilitates the joint exploration of diverse perspectives in real-life case studies. You follow one seminar per study period and conclude the year with an interdisciplinary group project.
GHIS is offered in English and is available to all UU Master’s students.
The is about making a change towards regenerativity. A regenerative society affirms life, and cares for the earth and its diverse communities. The programme brings together reflexive personal leadership with community-based changemaking, giving you useful knowledge and tools towards making caring changes to the world.
The programme offers practical workshops on topics such as social innovation, reflexive learning, dialogue and change-making, and decolonisation. Based on creative and action-oriented research in diverse groups of international students, Young Innovators works with outside communities on real issues to achieve change.
Young Innovators is offered in English and is available to all UU Master’s students.
In the you discover what kind of leader you are or want to be. You apply knowledge from different disciplines to real leadership dilemmas and get a better understanding of what it means to be a leader in a globalising world. You follow workshops (i.a. public speaking skills, conflict management) taught by experts ranging from UU professors and external lecturers.
During the interactive and intimate College Tours you can engage with leaders from different domains in society. You finish the year by working with a leader as part of the Leader to Shadow component.
The Leadership Programme is primarily offered in English. However, some elements can be offered in Dutch for students who prefer it. The leadership programme is available to all UU Master’s students.
As a participant of you’ll join a continuous urban research project in which students form a close-knit research group with a high degree of autonomy. Together you will research what goes on in Utrecht in all its diversity and dynamism by observing social activities, spatial surroundings, and the ecology of the city.
As a collective of students, residents, and researchers, you’ll embark on a journey to explore the complex relationships within the city, bridge disciplines and societal perspectives, and create products that make academic insights accessible to wider audiences.
UniCity is offered in Dutch and is available to all UU Master’s students.
For more information on honours education at the UU, go to the webpage, the honours , or email us at honourscollege@uu.nl.
Other opportunities
The Student Committee consists of 9 active students, representing each of the PIL tracks and contributes to both social and academic life at UU. Each year, a group of students are selected to work alongside the leadership of the Master’s Programme in organising regular social and academic events. Upcoming events include a boat tour of Utrecht, an end-of-period social evening, guest lectures and thesis support workshops. The Committee is also a point-of-contact for all PIL students; for any concerns or queries, please contact us via this mail address.
The Master’s programme in Public International Law makes use of an engaging reading group, as an extracurricular activity, to facilitate in-depth conversations about international law and its interactions with history and politics. The programme organises a reading club on the Decolonisation of Public International Law, where interested students and lectures critically explore the colonial roots of international law and their ongoing impacts. A variety of scholars have revealed that international law has long been shaped by Eurocentric ideologies, accompanied by the exploitation of resources by a small group of states and entities. This historical legacy marginalised various communities and their recognition, self-determination, and effective participation in the shaping of international law.
The Decolonisation Reading Club engages with the question of how racial discrimination, cultural subordination, and economic exploitation are embedded in international law and scholarship. The Reading Club also examines the paradoxes within the law of the sea and human rights frameworks, questioning whose interests they protect and whose are excluded. This reading group is a safe space for thoughtful discussion and critical reflection on how international law can be reimagined in the service of a more just and equitable global order.
At the beginning of each academic year, students will receive more information regarding reading clubs.
Urios is the Utrecht study association for International and European law. The association was founded in 1981 and has about 250 members, both Utrecht students and exchange students. The main goal of is to introduce students to International and European law on a more practical level. The association organizes many activities and two symposia per year with great speakers. Every month there is a special activity such as a debate evening, a lecture or a visit to a place of special interest for law students.
Every year Urios organizes two excursions abroad, one within Europe and one outside Europe. In the past members have been to places like Brussels, Geneva and New York. In the course of the year students will be informed about the destinations. Furthermore, Urios publishes its own journal on International and European Law, which is called, ‘Utrecht Journal for International and European Law’. This peer-reviewed online English periodical appears bi-annually. Upcoming events are announced in the newsletter, which appears monthly. More information about the activities you can find at the .
The Utrecht Journal of International and European Law (UJIEL) is an open access law journal edited by students of Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ. It is published biannually and applies double blind peer review. Each issue is devoted to a specific theme of international and/or European law chosen by the Board of Editors. The Journal was established in 1981 with the aim to contribute to legal scholarship on international and European law by promoting these fields' progressive development and providing an international forum for interaction between academia, practitioners and students. Today, UJIEL is distributed worldwide via the Utrecht Journal website and online databases such as HeinOnline and the Directory of Open Access Journals.
Students with an interest in International and/or European law are encouraged to apply for a position as executive editor. Students can email their CV and motivation letter to the (Deputy) Editor-in-Chief via utrechtjournal@gmail.com.
More information on the Journal can be found on the , and .
Each year, students from the Master’s programme in Public International Law participate in one or more external moot court competitions. In 2024-2025, PIL Master students participated in the Telders moot court competition, and the Frits Kalshoven competition.
The next iteration of the lab will take place in study periods 2 and 3 of the 2025-2026 academic year. The course is projected to be scheduled on Wednesday afternoons and Friday mornings. As the lab is of limited capacity, we will select participants based on a submitted 500-word motivation letter and your CV. For more information, click here.
Events are organised by the student committee as an opportunity for students to ask questions to the faculty members beyond academia - more along the lines of career development, their research area, or any life advice they might have to share. It is designed to foster informal mentoring and exchange of ideas.
A series of events which places the remarkable achievements of our LLM PIL Master’s Programme graduates in the spotlight. Each event features one or more distinguished alumni to share their knowledge and experiences, showcasing the diverse and impactful ways they are using their expertise in public international law in society. These events provide a platform for our alumni to discuss their work in strategic litigation, activism, civil society, academia, and other influential fields. Previous editions included Donna Cline, the Lead of the Environmental Mobile Justice Team for Global Rights Compliance in Ukraine, and Dr. Francesca Camilleri Vettiger, the Ambassador of Malta to the Council of Europe.
Each year, the PIL Master programme organizes an annual lecture dedicated to public international law. These lectures are delivered by scholars and practitioners in the field of international law. Previous speakers included, among others, John Swords, chief legal advisor to NATO Secretary General, Professor Alex Oude Elferink, scholar and practitioner of international law of the sea, Marjolein van den Brink, scholar and practitioner of human rights law.
In the past few years, a number of students of the Master’s programme in Public International Law have organised visits to the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons or other relevant organisations based in The Hague. At times, visits were also organized to NATO and other international institutions outside the Netherlands.