The final transnational project meeting of the EMERALD Erasmus+ Strategic partnership took place 12 May 2023 in Madrid, Spain. The Complutense University of Madrid invited us to their Somosaguas campus outside the city centre.

At the meeting our new partner, the Catholic University of Argentina, was introduced.

Afterwards Espen Storli at NTNU presented our Erasmus Mundus Design Measures application which we submitted in the middle of February. In the last part of the meeting we discussed our next steps - designing the master's programme and applying for an Erasmus Mundus master's degree.

On 11 and 12 May the EMERALD multiplier event took place at the Complutense University of Madrid. The presentations were very useful for the whole project group. We got to hear first-hand experiences from an existing Erasmus Mundus master's degree programme and to learn how potential employers for our proposed master's degree work with sustainability and what they expect from graduates when hiring.

Elisenda Paluzie i Hernàndez from the University of Barcelona talked about their experiences from The GLOCAL master's degree from the administrative side.

Soraya Romero from the Iberostar Group presented the Iberostar Group and their focus on sustainability, especially the management of natural resources in a global organization.

Paloma Fernández at the University of Barcelona presented her personal experiences from teaching in the GLOCAL master's programme:

The second physical transnational project meeting of the EMERALD project took place in Bucharest, Romania on 14 October 2022, hosted by the University of Bucharest.

In the meeting, the current status of the project and different models for Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degrees (i.e. different options for student mobility tracks) were presented. We also discussed the road ahead and plans until the next and final physical project meeting in Madrid in the spring of 2023.

On Friday 14 October 2022 at the University of Bucharest, the findings of the labour market needs analysis were presented.

Maija Absetz from the University of Helsinki presented the work that has been done on the labour market needs analysis (LMNA) for our prospective joint master's programme.

The LMNA report is based on international labour market reports from the OECD, ILO and IPCC, as well as national labour market reports from Norway, Finland and Sweden, as well as semi-structured interviews done by each of the partner universities.

The partners had read a draft version of the LMNA and provided feedback during the session. 

The physical learning, teaching, training activity took place at the University of Bucharest between Tuesday 11 October - Thursday 13 October 2022.

The topic of the LTTA workshop was the case study writing process and the teaching note writing process. After these introductory sessions two teaching cases were presented, one on Meliá by the Complutense University of Madrid, and one on Standard Oil by NTNU, with feedback sessions from the attendees.

The introductory sessions were held by Charlie Harris.
Associate partner Prof. Christopher McKenna also attended the workshop and provided feedback.

The EMERALD project's first physical event - a transnational project meeting - took place in Gothenburg, Sweden on 6 October 2021.

All the project partners except Bayreuth were able to make it.

At the meeting we were all very glad to be able to meet in person, and we discussed the status of the project, the planned project meetings, teaching method for case studies, and the status of the intellectual outputs we promised in our application.

Elena brought fans from Spain to all of us, looking forward to our project meeting in Madrid. 

The Emerald project's associated partner Christopher McKenna at the University of Oxford gave the partners and 3-4 associated employees at the respective partners' universities an introduction to the case-based teaching method. McKenna lead the session and used one of the cases that he and his team at Oxford have developed: Berry Brothers & Rudd: Family, Reputation, and the Cultivation of the European Wine Trade.

This event was held digitally on Friday 26 March 2021.

The Emerald project's kick-off meeting was held digitally on Friday 19 February. Here, the different partners in the project introduced themselves, and we discussed the main aspects of the application and the granted project.

EMERALD in key numbers

• 6 partners, 1 associated partner
• 4 transnational project meetings (Trondheim, Gothenburg, Bucuresti, Madrid)
• 4 intellectual outputs
• Open access case studies
• Pedagogical guidelines for case studies
• Labour market needs analysis
• Joint master’s degree program syllabus
• 3 multiplier events (Gothenburg, Bucuresti, Madrid)
• 2 learning, teaching, training events (Gothenburg, Bucuresti)