HERMES (Humanities, Equity and Multilingualism: A European Research and Education Space for Transcultural Studies) is a project funded by an ENLIGHT Incubator Grant, whose purpose is to design a joint European Master's programme in multilingualism and transculturality. The consortium comprises five universities of the ENLIGHT alliance: the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), which coordinates the project through Frederik Verbeke, a member of IdeoLit, together with the universities of Tartu, Groningen, Galway and Ghent. The project runs from September 2026 to October 2027.

The programme under design starts from a deliberately broad framework: the study of multilingualism and transculturality in contemporary Europe, understood at once as academic fields, social realities, professional practices and objects of public policy. On a shared common core, the Master's will articulate several specialisation strands: translation and interpreting for minority and regional languages, including training for European institutional contexts; transcultural mediation in multilingual societies and in migration contexts; linguistic landscape and ecolinguistics; and language technologies applied to less-resourced languages. The programme's central learning outcome is the education of transcultural mediators.

The proposal responds to a gap identified across the European landscape: there is currently no joint Master's programme that integrates translation studies, multilingualism, literary and cultural studies and language policy around a shared framework of transculturality and linguistic equity. It also responds to a concrete institutional need: the training of Basque-language translators and interpreters for the European institutions, a need that arises in comparable terms for Irish and for Estonian.

Its pedagogical model is Challenge-Based Education (CBE) combined with research-based inquiry, developed and tested across two editions of the BIP Connecting Cultures and consolidated through the IMPACT-HUM project and the LEMuR thematic network. 

Over these fourteen months the consortium will develop the programme-level learning outcomes, the study programme and its mobility trajectories, joint admission requirements, and a draft consortium agreement. The design is aligned from the outset with the criteria of the European Degree Label (Council of the EU Recommendation, May 2025), and the consortium intends to submit an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master's Degree application in early 2028. The two objectives are complementary: the European label brings recognition and quality assurance, while the Erasmus Mundus programme brings funding for the degree and scholarships for students.

The IMPACT-HUM (ENLIGHT+) – From CBE to European Joint Degrees: Co-Designing Impact workshop brought together European universities, researchers, and societal partners to explore how Challenge-Based Education (CBE) and transnational collaboration could drive impact and shape the next generation of European joint degrees. Through open roundtables and a collaborative design session, the event addressed impact-driven education and research, university–society collaboration, and the development of joint programmes in the context of the European Degree Label.

The ETN “Linguistic Equity in Multilingual Regions” (LEMuR) brings together scholars, students and community partners committed to linguistic equity in four historically multilingual regions: the West of Ireland (University of Galway); the trans-Pyrenean Basque Country (UPV/EHU); Canton Bern (University of Bern); and Southern Estonia (University of Tartu). These territories share not only a long history of power struggles in which language is implicated, but also a more recent increase in their linguistic and cultural diversity due to international migration. The network’s purpose is to understand – and transform – how historical language regimes shape present-day opportunities for minoritised speakers, with the original perspective of considering both historically minoritised / indigenous communities and migrant communities.

LEMuR follows two interrelated avenues of inquiry, Spaces and Speakers. Spaces interrogates cities, villages and landscapes through linguistic-landscape and city translation methods, challenging urban–rural and centre–periphery binaries and respective associations with multicultural migrant vs. autochthonous minority communities. Speakers foregrounds lived experience of multilingualism by examining published literary (auto)biographies as well as recorded oral (auto)biographies, allowing an understanding of equity issues remaining hidden in aggregate surveys. The transnational dimension of the ETN forges cross-border solidarity functioning as a catalyst for the sustainable promotion of linguistic equity.

The network’s team combines expertise in sociolinguistics, literary studies, education and translation studies, with plans to expand to human geography, city/rural development, political science, legal studies and philosophy. Senior academics work alongside early-career researchers and students through workshops, co-taught modules and participatory outreach involving museums, schools, care facilities, NGOs, language-planning bodies and policymakers.

LEMuR establishes a sustainable mentoring pipeline boosting researcher mobility and positions itself favourably for an Erasmus-Mundus Master’s and Horizon Europe and Creative Europe bids.
 

The “Connecting Cultures: Sustainability, Travel, Translation & Migration” course is a Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) Erasmus+ program run by ENLIGHT, the European university that brings together the UPV/EHU and nine other universities (Galway, Uppsala, Ghent, Groningen, Göttingen, Bratislava, Tartu, Bordeaux, and Bern).

The 2023/24 and 2024/25 editions featured around thirty students from different European universities and several international experts, with the aim of finding solutions to the challenges posed by various sociocultural stakeholders in the Basque Country (UNESCO Etxea, Basque Culinary Center, Accem, Etxepare Euskal Institutua, Elhuyar, Emaus Fundazioa, IRSEAraba).

The first phase of the course was delivered online during March and April, and the second phase was delivered in person for a week in mid-May at the Faculty of Arts of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) in Vitoria-Gasteiz, in collaboration with the IdeoLit research group.

The program received an award at the ENLIGHT Teaching & Learning Conference 2024 at the University of Tartu as an example of pedagogical innovation that seeks to put Challenge-Based Education (CBE) into practice. At the ENLIGHT Impact Conference 2025 at the University of Groningen, the course was highlighted as an example of generating social impact through education.