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M.A. Standards of Decision-Making Across Cultures (SDAC)
SDAC is a full time, four semester M.A. program supported by the Elite Network of Bavaria. This non-consecutive Master’s program draws from the fields of social and cultural anthropologies, political science, history, gender studies, economics, sociology, philosophy, and area studies. In SDAC, anthropology is the guiding discipline with ethnography and qualitative research as the main methods, however, all courses are taught in a spirit of multi perspectivity. This way, SDAC familiarizes students with a multiplicity of ways of thinking and developing contextual understandings about decisions, choices, and agency – especially in a (cross-)culturally oriented manner.
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Join us for an engaging guest lecture series by Leighton Williams (University of Otago, New Zealand), taking place at FAU from 26–29 January 2026.
The lectures explore Māori culture, language revitalisation, Indigenous literatures, colonial archives, and queer Indigenous responses to coloniality, o...
In October 2025, PD Dr Viola Thimm, senior lecturer at SDAC and Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology (Privatdozentin) at Heidelberg University, was awarded admission to the most prestigious and highly competitive DFG-Heisenberg-Program. This will enable her to fully concencrate on...
A new article by SDAC Senior Lecturer Dr. Maria Bondes explores how citizens in authoritarian regimes engage with new digital opportunities. Drawing on an online survey conducted in China in 2021, the study reveals that a surprisingly large share of Chinese citizens participates in ICT-based partici...
PD Dr. Viola Thimm organizes the FAU-lecture series "Queer Research Worlds" in winter semester 2025/2026 for the IZGDD (Interdisziplinäres Zentrum Gender-Diversität-Differenz). The public lecture series explores current discussions and debates in Queer Studies from an interdisciplinary perspective. ...
Join us for an engaging guest lecture series by Leighton Williams (University of Otago, New Zealand), taking place at FAU from 26–29 January 2026.
The lectures explore Māori culture, language revitalisation, Indigenous literatures, colonial archives, and queer Indigenous responses to coloniality, o...
In October 2025, PD Dr Viola Thimm, senior lecturer at SDAC and Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology (Privatdozentin) at Heidelberg University, was awarded admission to the most prestigious and highly competitive DFG-Heisenberg-Program. This will enable her to fully concencrate on...
A new article by SDAC Senior Lecturer Dr. Maria Bondes explores how citizens in authoritarian regimes engage with new digital opportunities. Drawing on an online survey conducted in China in 2021, the study reveals that a surprisingly large share of Chinese citizens participates in ICT-based partici...
PD Dr. Viola Thimm organizes the FAU-lecture series "Queer Research Worlds" in winter semester 2025/2026 for the IZGDD (Interdisziplinäres Zentrum Gender-Diversität-Differenz). The public lecture series explores current discussions and debates in Queer Studies from an interdisciplinary perspective. ...
The volume co-edited by SDAC's senior lecturers: Viola Thimm and Ferdiansyah Thajib, investigates the intersection of gender, sexuality, and religion from an anthropological lens. Taking women’s, non-binary, and queer religious life-worlds in Muslim and Christian contexts as a cross-cutting research...
