This November students from over 10 countries and jurisdictions started their IACA Master in Anti-Corruption Studies (MACS) journey.

This is the sixth cohort to follow the Academy’s renowned master’s programme, and students hail from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. The students’ professional backgrounds are as diverse as their countries of origin, with practitioners from civil society, and legal, public, and private sectors.

Module I covered “Concepts and Issues in Corruption”, providing the class with an in-depth introduction to topics such as the politics of corruption and reform, organizational misbehaviour and integrity management, the practitioner’s perspective of the fight against corruption, and research methods.

Expert lecturers from IACA’s frequent visiting faculty included Michael Johnston, Distinguished Professor at IACA and the Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Colgate University, Drago Kos, Chair of the OECD Working Group on Bribery, and Jeroen Maesschalck of the Leuven Institute of Criminology at KU Leuven.

The students also benefited from informal networking opportunities such as a welcome reception and teambuilding sessions. The class also attended a colloquium co-organized by IACA and the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens on “The Global Fight against Corruption and the Notion of Global Citizenship”, during which keynote speeches were given by Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary-General and Co-chair of the Centre, Heinz Fischer, former Federal President of Austria and Co-chair of the Centre, and Martin Kreutner, Dean and Executive Secretary of IACA.

The MACS is a two-year, in-career programme consisting of seven modules and a master’s thesis and is specifically designed to be completed in parallel to working full time.

The programme starts in October every year and applications are accepted year-round. Read more about the MACS here.