The Erasmus Mundus Master's Program in Public Policy (Mundus MAPP) is a 2-year-long international Master's course. It directly responds to the educational needs created by the rapidly changing global environment and new public policy challenges. Mundus MAPP equips graduates with the conceptual knowledge and hard skills that are necessary for understanding and decisively intervening in contemporary transnational policy problems, from climate change to international terrorism or financial regulatory failure. It provides a detailed and systematic understanding of how political institutions, processes and public policies operate and interact from the global political economy through to national and local levels with a direct focus on European engagements at these levels of governance. Inter-disciplinarity and practical application of conceptual knowledge are hallmarks of Mundus MAPP.

Four leading European universities join forces to deliver Mundus MAPP: Central European University in Budapest (Hungary), the Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University in The Hague (Netherlands), the University of York (UK) and the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (Spain). Established in 2007, the program operates as an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Program funded by the European Commission.

Building on Mundus MAPP's successful track record, the integrated curriculum provides a uniform core of policy studies as well as modules specific to particular mobility tracks, drawn predominantly from the fields of International Relations, European Studies and Development Studies. The four mobility tracks allow students to specialise in Political Economy and Development, Governance and Development, and European and Global Public Policy, respectively. Each mobility track includes a field trip to a relevant public sector organisation and an internship.

Mundus MAPP is unique in the flexibility with which students can tailor their learning experiences to their individual needs through the selection of mobility tracks. Mobility tracks in the new joint degree each allow for a different focus – Political Economy and Development, Governance and Development, Global Public Policy and European Public Policy – while maintaining a uniform core of policy studies subjects. Students are exposed to a variety of European academic traditions and policy contexts through the study visits and internships. Moreover, all mobility tracks include exposure to either development studies or to a careful consideration of the impact of economic and democratic transition, rather than merely the experience of Western European or North American countries.

The ability to “mix and match” first and second year institutions (the mobility component) thus allows students to build up a specialisation within Mundus MAPP that is most suited to their individual career objectives. Each of the track-specific core course blocks complement the general core courses where students acquire common theoretical grounding in policy studies but provide somewhat different disciplinary perspectives.

Mundus MAPP includes a strong practical component, represented by the internship, the spring course/study-trip and courses taught with the participation of invited professionals. This is specifically designed to allow students to observe the real world of policy-making, interact with practitioners, apply theoretical knowledge to practical policy problems, collect empirical (case study) material for research projects and theses, and build up professional contacts and networks that will facilitate their integration into the job market.

The Mundus MAPP program provides scholarships to outstanding students from both inside and outside the European Union to attend Mundus MAPP and to visiting scholars to participate in teaching and research.

You can find more information regarding the Mundus MAPP at the programme's website: www.mundusmapp.org

Download the Master's in Public Policy (Mundus MAPP) brochure