• Carla Mauricio, Humanities alumna, Communications Officer at COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) (Brussels, Belgium)

Carla Mauricio Planas studied Humanities at UPF (class of 2012). She says that she really enjoyed the programme, not just for the content and teaching quality, but also because of the friends she made and still has today, as well as the Erasmus exchange she did at the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail. After her first experience in the professional world, she decided to pursue a master’s degree in Journalism, Media and Communications at Cardiff University (Wales, United Kingdom). A few months of work in Germany, on a communications campaign for United Nations Volunteers, served as the prelude to a Robert Schuman communications traineeship at the European Parliament. Fascinated by Brussels, she decided to look for work there.

And she succeeded. She has been working as a communications officer for the COST Association (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) since 2016. ‘At COST, I give visibility to the association through the production of publications and audiovisual media, but I also manage campaigns and digital communications, when extra help is needed’, she explains. Thanks to her background in humanities, she has a broad vision of the field of communications. ‘Humanities formed my critical spirit. I learned to write and interpret reality, an essential skill for any job that is even more essential in the field of communications, because you can apply analytical reasoning to figure out how to use the content in front of you.’

“Belgium has more job protections and a better work-life balance”

According to Carla, scientific networks are critical to creating an efficient, integrated European research system. ‘Knowledge sharing between countries is essential for scientific excellence and to advance in the development of ideas and projects, which would otherwise take much longer to evolve or even be abandoned’, she argues. Nevertheless, she acknowledges that there are major structural differences between European countries and between regions within a single country: ‘Even though the European Union has many programmes intended to mitigate these differences, it is very difficult to change political and cultural practices shaped by the history of each country.’

Her plans for the future are to continue growing professionally, although ‘probably not in Catalonia’. ‘But you never know’, she continues. ‘I don’t want to close any doors.’ She enjoys building her career in a country like Belgium, not only for financial reasons, but also because the perception of workers is quite different. ‘Belgium has more job protections and a better work-life balance’, she says. ‘One of my main goals is to try to make women’s professional standing equal to that of men, although much (too much) remains to be done.’

Photo gallery

Carla Mauricio in her graduation; in Brussels and on a bike route through Wallonia