Fraser Wilson

2025-2027 GLOCAL student Mariia Balvan has written the below blog post to guide you through the intro week you’ll receive when you arrive in Glasgow. Check it out below!

The introductory week in Glasgow might feel quite overwhelming at first. There is a lot going on, you have a new city to explore and many new faces to remember. At the same time, it is one of the most exciting weeks of the whole semester.  You meet people, attend events, and might even make friends for the rest of your stay.

Here are a few tips to help you enjoy it to the fullest.

If you can, try to arrive a few days before the orientation starts. This gives you time to explore the city at your own pace. Walk around, find your favourite grocery store, and get used to the route to campus. It will help you feel more settled and relaxed once everything begins.

Make sure to download the MySRC app and sign up for as many events as you can. It is a fun and easy way to meet people and try something new. During the first two weeks, UofG sport clubs offer free taster sessions. You can try skiing, rowing, or even surfing. My GLOCAL fellow Julia and I went sailing, and it was an unforgettable experience. Just remember to stay dry – Glasgow weather can be a little unpredictable.

Joining one of the free walking tours organised by SRC is also a great idea. They help you get to know the campus and the area around it, and you learn interesting facts along the way.

Alongside all the fun, there are a few important things to take care of. You will need to complete your visa registration to finalise the university enrolment. It is also important to register with a GP. There is a clinic in the Fraser Building, but places fill up quickly, so try to do this early.

Don’t miss the Welcome Fair. Yes, the free pizza and goodie bags are nice, but it is also the perfect place to discover clubs and societies. There is something for everyone, from walking and baking to salsa and bachata dancing.

And finally, make sure you experience a ceilidh. This is a true Scottish tradition and an absolute must. Many student organisations host ceilidhs during the first week. I went to one organised by ESN and loved it. If you want an even more local experience, check out Avant Garde Music Bar & Restaurant, where ceilidhs take place on Saturdays.

One last tip before you go: always carry an umbrella – just in case ☔

Depending on the track selected, GLOCAL students have the opportunity to undertake an internship, placement, and/or consultancy during the programme. These opportunities fluctuate from year to year depending on availability, as well as the language capabilities and skill competencies of individual students.

Barcelona, Rotterdam and Los Andes offer an internship or consultancy project as a credit-bearing optional course. These are undertaken in agreement with the organisation and the university. Internships may be possible in other countries but these will not be credit bearing and should be discussed separately with the course convenor.

Mariia Balvan from our 2025-2027 cohort worked as a consultancy intern for Sinèrgics Coworking in Barcelona, and wrote about her experience below.

During the past months, I worked as a consultancy intern for Sinèrgics Coworking in Barcelona. It is the first municipal social return coworking space located in the Baró de Viver neighborhood of Barcelona.

Instead of paying full rent in euros, coworkers contribute four hours of work per month to the community and get unlimited access to the facilities.

Together with a team, we analyzed how this system works in practice.
We benchmarked it against market prices and studied how FLOCs (local currency) move between coworkers, entities, and local partners. Together, we looked closer at the main indicators and developed recommendations to strengthen the model.

It was interesting to see how local development actually happens, not through large investments, but through everyday knowledge exchange between people in the same neighborhood.

Grateful for the opportunity provided by Universitat de Barcelona.

Hear from 2025-2027 student Monike Sánchez Troetsch about her first semester on GLOCAL and her perseverance in never giving up in applying to be part of the programme. Her words are below.

Four applications. Three postponements. One decision that changed everything.

There’s a version of me that gave up. Honestly, after years of applying, deferring, and wondering if the timing would ever be right, it would have been easy to let it go.

But here I am, wrapping up my first semester at the University of Glasgow and already deep into my second at the Universitat de Barcelona.

And I can say without hesitation: it was worth the wait.

This semester didn’t just add credentials to my CV. It genuinely rewired the way I think.After more than a decade working in marketing research, communications, and business strategy across Latin America and the Caribbean, I thought I had a solid mental map of how markets and organizations worked. What I didn’t expect was how much I didn’t know about why they work the way they do.

Exploring how different political economies shape business behavior made me look at everything I had done professionally through a completely new lens, why certain strategies work in some markets and completely fail in others, why institutional context is not background noise but the actual stage on which business plays out. It explained patterns I had observed for years but never had the framework to articulate.

One of the highlights of the semester? Our research on Botswana — arguably one of the most fascinating economic stories on the African continent. While so many resource-rich nations fell into familiar traps of corruption, conflict, and dependency, Botswana carved a radically different path with its diamond industry. We dug into why, what made it exceptional, what institutional choices created that divergence, and what the rest of the world can learn from it.

That work earned our team the Ganseliesel & Yatsuhashi Prize (thank you to my awesome teammates Amara Agomuo and Aanya Agarwal), and honestly? This is the kind of research that reminds you why you choose to go back to school in the first place. 🏆

Then there’s the classroom itself, and I mean that beyond four walls.

Being surrounded by peers from different countries, industries, and worldviews has been one of the most underrated parts of this experience. In marketing and research, we talk endlessly about understanding diverse audiences. But living that diversity in every seminar, debate, and group project is something no methodology course can replicate.

And on a more personal note, I finally started learning German. Something I’ve wanted to do for years, partly because language is a professional asset, but mostly because it brings me a little closer to my family roots. There’s something quietly meaningful about that.

To anyone sitting on an application, wondering if it’s too late, if the timing is off, if the opportunity has passed, sometimes the path that asks the most of you before it even begins is the one that gives the most back.

On to semester two.