STUDYING
@ IOB
I
OB is a multidisciplinary academic
institution where people of different opinions,
religions and nationalities feel at home. It has
several decades of experience in organising
international educational programmes in the field
of development policy and management. IOB is
part of the University of Antwerp, and it is located
on the University’s City Campus in Antwerp,
Belgium.
Each year, the Institute is home to some
80 students of approximately 30 different
nationalities from diverse academic and
professional backgrounds. This provides for an
extraordinary multicultural and multidisciplinary
learning environment. Our Master programmes
are organised in English, but special facilities
are offered to students from other linguistic
backgrounds.
IOB aims to offer policy-oriented education
that combines the latest social scientific insights
with relevance to the development challenge.
Students are expected to learn from each other’s
experiences, as well as from their exposure to
4 · master programmes
living and working in a developed country. The
institute focuses on student-centred learning,
and its approach involves a combination of
teaching methods (lectures, individual and group
assignments, discussions, student presentations,
literature-based independent study, seminars,
guest lectures, analysis of case studies,
simulations, individual tutoring).
Our ideal classroom is composed of a mix of
students, mainly from the global south, but
including students from the global north as well.
The target group from the global north consists of
individuals who are already pursuing (or wish to
pursue) careers in development. The target group
from the global south consists of mid-career
development professionals from low-income
and middle-income countries whose previous
academic backgrounds and career records
suggest that they stand to reap substantial
benefits from advanced international education.
At their home institutions, they are strongly
motivated to contribute to the identification,
implementation, monitoring and evaluation of
development policies and programmes.