News

  On 3 July 2024, Philipp König (dual career PhD fellow at UNU-MERIT) will defend his thesis, entitled ‘Towards Collaborative Accountability – Changing Patterns of Accountability in International Development Finance’. In this blog, Philipp looks back on his PhD journey, together wit...

  Earlier this month on World Environment Day (5 June), UNU-MERIT held a special UN Cinema public event in collaboration with the United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe (UNRIC), with support from the municipality of Maastricht and Lumière Cinema. Below follows an excerpt ...

  Last month, Maastricht University welcomed the European Commissioner for Climate Action, Wopke Hoekstra, for a public speech followed by a Q&A session (in an event organized by Studio Europa Maastricht in collaboration with the Centre for European Research in Maastricht, the Sustainable U...

Our capacity development programmes have helped the Maastricht University School of Business and Economics (SBE) rank among the global top 80 business schools for open-enrolment executive education. Last week, SBE announced that its open executive programmes had been included in the global top 80 by...

  In a significant step towards strengthening global ties in the fields of research and education, UNU-MERIT and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for academic collaboration. The MoU was signed today, 29 May 2024, by the United N...

A guest post by Rodrigo Valdés, Director of the Western Hemisphere Department of the International Monetary Fund and guest speaker at our upcoming UNESCO Chair webinar Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) face multiple and diverse challenges related to climate change, given the urgent ...

Maastricht, The Netherlands — The United Nations University (UNU) announces a leadership change at UNU Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT). UNU expresses its sincere gratitude to Professor Dr. Bartel Van de Walle, who has concluded his four-year...

By Jorge Valverde, PhD fellow at UNU-MERIT and member of our UNESCO Chair team Critical minerals are a subset of minerals considered crucial for the manufacturing and technological needs of companies, industries, nations, or even the world. For example, rare earth elements are required for the produ...

Earlier this month, Carlo Pietrobelli (Professorial Fellow at UNU-MERIT and holder of our UNESCO Chair on Science, Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development for Latin America) gave a keynote speech at the Fourth Meeting of the Conference on Science, Innovation and Information and Communi...

By Josh Tendai, Alumni Officer at UNU-MERIT  Last Friday (12 April), we held the ‘Careers Beyond Borders’ hybrid career event at UNU-MERIT in collaboration with the United Nations Student Association (UNSA) Maastricht. Aimed at students aspiring to make a difference in the world, this event illumina...

By Ari Perdana, dual career PhD fellow at UNU-MERIT In March this year, the 2022 cohort of UNU-MERIT’s dual career (DC) PhD fellows celebrated the second anniversary of the start of their PhDs. Two weeks ago, over dinner in a noodle restaurant near Maastricht’s Jekerkwartier, Adam Adou, Rodrigo Lópe...

Each year in March, UNU-MERIT’s PhD Office organizes a week-long event known as Research Week, offering a dedicated time for PhD fellows to focus on their research and connect with peers. But what exactly does the Research Week entail, and how does it benefit the institute as a whole? Basking in the...

By Victor Osei Kwadwo (researcher and lecturer, UNU-MERIT) and Rose Camille Vincent (Assistant Professor, Utrecht University) Education drives economic growth and individual well-being. Secondary education, in particular, plays a crucial role. In recent decades, this recognition has encouraged sever...

By Nanditha Mathew and Bernardo Caldarola (UNU-MERIT researchers and co-organisers of our Economic Fitness and Complexity Summer School) The science of complex systems can play an important role in understanding social and economic dynamics but its application to economics has not yet been fully exp...

5 days, state-of-the-art research, top experts In June 2023, UNU-MERIT co-organised a summer school on economic fitness and complexity (EFC) together with the Enrico Fermi Research Centre in Rome (CREF). The five-day event brought together 26 speakers – from as far afield as Peking University ...

  On 19-20 February 2024, UNU-MERIT hosted the final symposium of CatChain (‘Catching–up along the global value chain: models, determinants and policy implications in the era of the fourth industrial revolution’), a major four-year EU-funded research project. Led by Bocconi Universi...

Michelle González Amador – who is currently completing her full-time PhD at UNU-MERIT – has been involved with the multi-institutional initiative Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG) for several years and was previously the organiser of the Latin America and Caribbean Working Group. ...

By Victor Osei Kwadwo, researcher and lecturer at UNU-MERIT In March 2023, three friends and I – all of us graduates of UNU-MERIT’s PhD programme – were thrilled when we stumbled upon a research fellowship opportunity in Africa, our home continent. Unfortunately, it turned out that the call was for ...

  In December, the latest international climate negotiations at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) made headlines around the world, as expected – but, as UNU-MERIT researcher Sanae Okamoto argues in an op-ed written for The Japan Times, two major achievements of thi...

  Last week, the European Commission launched its European Research Area Policy Platform, aspects of which researchers from UNU-MERIT and Maastricht University worked on as part of a larger consortium.   About the European Research Area Launched in 2000, the European Research Area (ERA) ai...