The Joint Master’s programme is a combined degree that has been offered jointly between GIUB and EHS since 2013. The two-year course takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding processes of global environmental change and their socio-ecological impacts, with a specific focus on the Global South, from a combined science and policy perspective. The programme is taught entirely in English by staff from both institutes, and each year admits 24 students from around the world.
The Rector of the University of Bonn, Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Michael Hoch, and the Director of EHS at the United Nations University, Prof. Dr. Shen Xiaomeng, opened the event with a dialogue discussing the importance of the collaborative degree – the first and still only one of its kind – between the two universities. Rector Hoch also emphasised the key contribution that the Joint Master’s makes to both the University of Bonn’s internationalisation strategy as well as more international teaching in Germany.
Two celebratory addresses were made by Ms. Petra Berkner of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and Ms. Petra Meyer, from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Since 2017, DAAD has supported the Joint Master’s through its Development-Related Postgraduate Courses (EPOS) programme. This has enabled up to eight students from countries in the Global South – from Colombia to Kenya to Vietnam - to join the programme each year, on a fully-funded scholarship, thus diversifying the student body within GIUB.
We were delighted to welcome Prof. Dr. Emma Mawdsley, from the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge, to deliver the event’s keynote lecture. Prof. Dr. Mawdsley is one of the most important contemporary development geographers, who works on the global politics of development, with emphasis on the changing landscape of the aid sector and international cooperation. In her lecture, Prof. Dr. Mawdsley analysed the emerging issue of ultra-processed food, arguing that it connects both body and planet, and global North and South, in a way that potentially presents a much-needed systemic response to global environmental inequalities and injustices. She handed out 12 tubes of Pringles to demonstrate just how many “industrial edible products” these sorts of ultra-processed foods contain.
Finally, two of the founders of the Joint Master’s, Prof. Dr. Klaus Greve from GIUB and Prof. Dr. Jörg Szarzynski from EHS, closed the event by holding a round table discussion with current Joint Master’s students and alumni. In the time since the programme has been running, 256 students from 46 countries have now graduated, and are working all over the world for international organisations, NGOs and the private sector in the fields of disaster prevention, humanitarian aid, international relations, climate change, and environmental security.
The Joint Master’s is chaired by Prof. Dr. Jessica Budds from the Geography Department at the University of Bonn, and Prof. Dr. Zita Sebesvari from the Institute for Environment and Human Security at the United Nations University.
