In the big history course, experts from astrophysicists to historians guide you in exploring this question while taking you on a journey from the Big Bang to today. Along the way, you connect various natural and human historical processes to each other. You also link these processes to an aspect of your world that matters to you, such as a ring or guitar, and explore that aspect’s place in big history using any format you like. 

As a result, you practise integrating disciplinary perspectives and spatial and temporal scales, strengthen your complexity awareness and out-of-the-box thinking, and learn to appreciate how your chosen aspect fits into a bigger picture. In the process, you will strengthen your complexity awareness and capacity for out-of-the-box thinking.

Coordinator

Dr. Esther Queadackers

Timetable

You can find the timetable on Datanose.

Entry requirements

Open to second-year and third-year UvA Bachelor's students and other interested parties, such as contract students or students from other Dutch higher education institutions. Master's students can only participate if there are still spots available.

Special with this course is that highschool students may also participate free of charge, accompanied by one supervisor per school. There is a maximum of six students per school. For more information about the registration procedure, schools can contact us at keuzeonderwijs-iis@uva.nl The deadline for registration is two weeks before the start of the course.

Registration

UvA Bachelor's students can register from 30 November to 7 December 2026in the GLASS registration rounds. Master’s students can send a short motivation to keuzeonderwijs-iis@uva.nl.

‘Bijvak’ students and contract students can register from 30 November 2026 until two weeks prior to the start of the course, by completing the online registration form.

If you have any trouble while registering, please contact us at keuzeonderwijs-iis@uva.nl.

Please note: as a contract student you can choose to participate either including or excluding assessment. If you choose the latter, you only have access to the seven lectures of the course. If you also wish to attend the seminars, please choose 'including assessment'.

Costs

Prices can be found on the IIS website.

Microcredentials for professionals 

Contract students and UvA staff who successfully participated in the course’s assessment will receive information to obtain a digital certificate in the form of a microcredential. Big History is part of the national microcredentials pilot, with which the higher education field is shaping a system for online certification of individual educational units. More information about the pilot can be found here.

SDGs in education

The IIS strives to reflect current societal issues and challenges in our elective courses, honours modules and degree programmes and attempts to integrate the following Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in this course. For more information about these goals, please visit the SDGs website.