Arqus Global Changemakers Programme : EID@Lyon Graduate School welcomes Maynooth University students

The very first Winter School organized by EID@Lyon in January 2026 provided an opportunity to test a new format: a condensed version of the University Diploma in “Action and Innovation Against Emerging Infectious Diseases,” offering a short hands-on experience of transdisciplinary work. Over the course of a day and half, participants in this short module work on the issues covered by full-time students in the University Diploma program, using the same design thinking approach: immersion, definition of a specific problem, ideation, and prototyping.

It was this transdisciplinary approach, and the module’s accessibility to learners of all ages and disciplinary backgrounds, that caught the attention of the International Relations Office and the Arqus Alliance when developing the student activity program for this first edition of the Global Changemakers Programme.

Open to second-year Bachelor of Arts students at Maynooth University, the Global Changemakers Programme allows students who might not have the opportunity to join a long-term international mobility programme to experience an international academic stay.

Amongst the participants in this inaugural edition of the program were students from very diverse fields: psychology, sociology, marketing, geography or anthropology. These disciplines are far removed from emerging infectious diseases — yet the students fully embraced the challenges presented!

 

Our young Irish participants focused on two main topics:

• The fight against tiger mosquitoes in urban areas
• The coexistence between park users and coypus — carriers of leptospirosis — at the Ouagadougou Aquatic Garden in the Confluence neighborhood of Lyon

These were two very novel issues for them, as the tiger mosquito has not yet reached Irish shores and coypus are still rare in Ireland, occurring only in very localized areas.

Even without specific knowledge of infectious diseases, their transmission, or the mechanisms of action of the pathogens involved, the young students in the Global Changemakers Programme spontaneously demonstrated excellent scientific thinking and embraced the proposed topics with enthusiasm. They shared their ideas, knowledge, and perspectives to generate solutions and assess their feasibility: the very essence of transdisciplinary work!

An international and even more interdisciplinary version of our transdisciplinary module, which has clearly demonstrated that this type of work can be implemented with all types of learners!

EID@Lyon is delighted to have participated in this pilot edition of the Global Changemakers Programme and to have contributed to the international experience of these first 12 students!

An experience worth repeating!