Why enrol for a Master’s or a PhD?

In today’s highly competitive world, a solid education is the cornerstone of a successful and rewarding career, and an education that specifically prepares you for the challenges of operating at an international level will afford you even greater opportunities in the workplace.

In TRADE, we offer a selection of Master’s and PhD programmes that will enable you to focus on a topic that is of particular interest to you. Possible topics might include export competitiveness, development economics, global and regional trade flows and alliances, currency dynamics, agricultural trade, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Global Value Chains (GVCs), and many others. The Master’s programme gives students the opportunity to develop practical skills in advanced research methodology, while the PhD programme builds on this foundation and ensures that students make a meaningful contribution to their chosen discipline.

By fine-tuning your research and analytical skills, you (as a Master’s or PhD student) will find many doors opening to you in a professional context. At the same time, your contribution to the established literature will help others to better understand the complex world we live in.

You will be in excellent hands if you choose to study through TRADE. Prof Wilma Viviers, director of TRADE, was awarded a WTO Chair in 2014 in recognition of the research entity’s globally-oriented and high-quality research outputs. As a result, the research conducted by the TRADE team and postgraduate students leans towards topics that resonate with the WTO’s multilateral, regional and development agendas, and have relevance for economic and trade policymakers at a national and regional level. 

Note that the WTO Chairs Programme at the NWU makes provision for the award of bursaries and awards to deserving Master’s and PhD students.