Hicham is a young, ambitious Moroccan student who aspires to be a Psychologist. His passion for this field has allowed him to be selected for the prestigious Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Scholarship in 2019 in Work, Organizational, and Personnel Psychology from the University of Valencia and the University of Bologna.  

 » I always wanted to become a psychologist. During my academic career, I have strived to take maximum advantage of material and information available both within the confines of university and the never-ending scope of scientific research. This passion has always nurtured my goal of becoming a successful researcher and organisational psychologist. In my bachelor’s degree, I graduated with the first rank in my Psychology class at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco. After, I knew that I wanted to study work and organisational psychology. Statistically speaking, 1/3 of our life will be spent at work, which is fascinating and scary at the same time since we rarely hear about mental health and psychology inside companies. To pursue my dream of studying psychology applied to the workplace, I was offered the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree (EMJMD) Scholarship and the Chevening scholarship to study in the UK. Due to the multicultural experience of the EMJMD, and the high quality of the program and its international reputation, I decided to go with the EMJMD offer. Now, I hold the EMJMD in Work, Organizational, and Personnel Psychology from the University of Valencia and the University of Bologna with the highest possible grade of 110/110 cum laude.

The master’s program takes place simultaneously in the four European universities (the University of Valencia, University of Barcelona, University of Bologna, and University of Coimbra). As a rule, the Erasmus Mundus compulsory requirement regarding mobility is that the student must complete at least two periods of study in two universities from two different European countries. In my case, my home university was the University of Bologna, and my host university was the University of Valencia. In addition to that, I did my internship in Germany. Even though the EMJMD provides granted students with prestigious scholarships and full support, it is still important that the students should be ready to travel frequently.

Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree (EMJMD) in Work, Organizational and Personnel Psychology (WOP-P) is a 120 ECTS credit Master’s Degree (two academic years), implemented by an international consortium, which aims to train excellent experts in work and organisational psychology for an increasingly globalised socio-economic context. The master program follows the scientist-practitioner model, which addresses both an explanatory scientific approach to human behaviour and contexts as well as the intervention. It includes evidence-based models, combined with methodology and research activities, and it integrates both traditional work and organisational psychology contents and emergent-topics in the field. By the end of the master’s degree, the students receive two diplomas from the coordinating university (University of Valencia), and another University where the students attended their classes.

As someone who is interested in discovering new places and cultures, the Erasmus experience was not only an educational one, but it was deeply personal. During the two years of the master’s degree, I had the chance to live in three countries and to discover six other ones. Before these experiences, I used to think that people travel to escape life, but I realised that the person could not be fully alive until they decide to step out of comfort and embrace the journey of discovering what’s outside of what they call “home” «