Erasmus Mundus Master's Programme in Industrial Ecology: Analysis of its Master's Theses

From 2011 to 2017,the European Commission has funded the “Erasmus Mundus Master’s Programme in Industrial Ecology” (MIND), which offers its pre-selected students a double degree. To achieve thatdegree, students had to study successfully each one year (equivalent to 60 ECTS) at two of the following universities of the MIND consortium: University of Graz; Leiden University and Delft University of Technology; Chalmers University of Technology Gothenburg.During the six years period mentioned, five intakes of students were enrolled in the MIND programme, in total 78 students from 35 countries from all five continents. By January 2018, 75 of those have finished their studies and been awarded with an MSc degree. This paper will explore and analyse the master’stheses of the 75 MIND alumni in order to get an overview of the research topics of the only international Industrial Ecology master programme.Amongst the topics of these master’stheses, in particular the research questions, the geographical coverage and the methods applied are of great interest. Thus, therewill be presented and discussed in detail, taking into account the implications for the context of sustainability science, too.These findings contribute to the future development of the emerging field of Industrial Ecology by considering the actual and earlyresearch work and perspectives of fresh alumni.