As a tenured uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, David Flach­er has suc­ceed­ed in his gam­ble with EPOG+ (Eco­nom­ic Poli­cies for Glob­al bifur­ca­tion), an Eras­mus Mundus Master’s pro­gram launched in 2018, since the Euro­pean Union (EU) decid­ed to fund EPOG-JM (Joint Mas­ter), the new Eras­mus Mundus master’s pro­gramme, with 5 mil­lion euros. A Master’s degree focus­ing on the theme of the nec­es­sary eco­log­i­cal bifurcation.

A dou­bly suc­cess­ful gam­ble giv­en that, fol­low­ing on from EPOG+, an EPOG-Doc­tor­al Net­work (EPOG-DN) has also come to be. Eleven the­ses, six of them by for­mer EPOG+ stu­dents, are cur­rent­ly fund­ed by the EU with 2.5 mil­lion euros. The idea behind these two projects? “First and fore­most, to step up analy­sis, research and train­ing on the chal­lenges of the eco­log­i­cal tran­si­tion. We’re clear­ly talk­ing about the need seen for an eco­log­i­cal bifur­ca­tion, since we are at a stage where we need to redou­ble our efforts to avoid the cat­a­stro­phe pre­dict­ed. Sec­ond­ly, we need to rec­og­nize that the changes we need to make can­not be achieved with­out the involve­ment of the glob­al South,” he assures us.

As with EPOG+, the EPOG-JM con­sor­tium is led by UTC. This pro­gramme has been joined by 11 main aca­d­e­m­ic part­ners, three more than EPOG+, and by over forty asso­ciates from every con­ti­nent except Ocea­nia. The main part­ners include the CNAM in France, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Gene­va and two Brazil­ian uni­ver­si­ties, viz., the Fed­er­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Rio de Janeiro and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Camp­inas near São Paulo. The pro­gramme is attend­ed by some 50 high­ly select­ed stu­dents — gen­er­al­ly 60% women and 40% men — from over 20 coun­tries world­wide, includ­ing Mex­i­co, Bangladesh, Nepal, Tajik­istan, Egypt, Aus­tralia and the USA.

Asso­ciate part­ners include aca­d­e­m­ic play­ers from all over the world, such as Sor­bonne Paris Nord Uni­ver­si­ty and ENS Paris Saclay in France, the Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute for Applied Sys­tems Analy­sis in Aus­tria, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pisa in Italy, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds in the UK, Hitot­sub­ashi Uni­ver­si­ty in Japan and the Uni­ver­si­dad Nacional Autóno­ma de Méx­i­co in Mex­i­co, as well as non-aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions such as the Agence française du développe­ment, the Inter­con­ti­nen­tal Net­work for the Social Sol­i­dar­i­ty Econ­o­my, the CEPAL, one of the UN’s five region­al eco­nom­ic com­mis­sions and the Unesco Chair. “What is inter­est­ing is that the more the pro­gramme gains in rep­u­ta­tion world­wide, the more the part­ners we approach respond pos­i­tive­ly to join­ing the con­sor­tium. In some cas­es, we also receive spon­ta­neous requests from play­ers wish­ing to join us. These asso­ci­at­ed part­ners wel­come, among oth­ers, stu­dents who wish to car­ry out their end-ofyear Master’s dis­ser­ta­tion in line with their project”, he explains.

All of the eleven EPOG-DN the­ses deal with themes linked to the eco­log­i­cal bifur­ca­tion that David Flach­er and his col­leagues are call­ing for. “The aim is to address socio-tech­ni­cal issues, macro-eco­nom­ic and finan­cial issues and socioe­co­log­i­cal issues simul­ta­ne­ous­ly,” con­cludes David Flacher.

MSD