News

Inspired by the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, this series is the product of an international team from UNU-MERIT that first came together in the summer of 2020. It aims to provide a substantial and accessible platform in the fight against racism, articulated by young African thought-leaders who put...

Desertification may still seem like a far-off scenario for Dutch farmers, but it is a growing problem worldwide. The use of pesticides in agriculture, as well as the focus on monoculture, is depleting farmland to the point that it becomes lifeless land and ultimately desert. UM students Vincent and ...

The Sustainable Development Goals Report (2020) notes that we are far from being an open-defecation free world. Since 2015, around 500 million low-cost toilets have been diffused, but still about 2 billion people do not have access to a functioning toilet and about 4.2 billion people are using toile...

Why are boys and teenagers most prone to dropping out of school in Jordan? Why are Syrian children up to 10 times more likely to drop out than Jordanian children? And why is the return on education so uneven for different groups? In December 2020, Prof Franziska Gassmann took part in the launch even...

“The results for 2019 reinforce UNU-MERIT’s reputation in academic and policy circles as a leading institute undertaking societally and policy relevant research — particularly in the economics of innovation and technological change, including the governance of science and technology and on factors l...

A paper entitled ‘What factors drive successful industrialization? Evidence and implications for developing countries‘, co-authored by UNU-MERIT’s Dr Bruno Martorano, has won the 2019 Best Paper Award from the academic journal ‘Structural Change and Economic Dynamics’. The Journal’...

As many as 2 billion people worldwide do not have access to functioning toilets, and more than 4 billion use toilets that may be contaminating water sources, according to the latest Sustainable Development Goals Report (2020). This matters because sanitation feeds into almost every other SDG through...

We have received the shocking and tragic news of the sudden passing away of our Master’s alumnus Simon Neuland at the age of 30, last Friday. Simon was part of the 2013-14 cohort on our Master of Science in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP), in the Social Protection Specialisation. We ...

On 17 March 2020, the Mayor of Amsterdam announced new measures to contain the coronavirus, including the closure of schools, restaurants, and cultural venues. In July 2020, researchers from the Migration, Transformation and Sustainability (MISTY) project sent an online survey to members of the Amst...

A post by Riesa van Doorn, a student on our MSc. in Public Policy and Human Development … Today, on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, let’s remind ourselves that violence against girls and women persists in every country in the world. According to the World H...

As director of a PhD programme with part-time professional participants who actively choose to study, I often hear myself saying that I have the best students. A programme with adults who re-enter education for the sake of learning and joy brings a student population that is mature, diverse, enthusi...

Post-pandemic, should we move away from resource extraction and accelerate moves to a circular economy? What new economic policy theories and approaches should we entertain? And how might these innovations more effectively address pre-coronavirus issues such as social and economic inequality? A Chat...

Our ‘Dual Focus PhD’ series tracks the working lives of our part-time PhD fellows. Many work at the highest of levels, both nationally and internationally — and in normal times they come to Maastricht in person for our unique PhD Dual Career Training Programme in Governance and Policy Analysis (GPAC...

In October 2020, a team led by Stanford University’s John Ioannidis published an update of their ranking of the top 2% scientists in the world in the journal PLOS Biology. High up the ranking are several researchers from Maastricht University’s School of Business and Economics, with the innova...

Our ‘Dual Focus PhD’ series tracks the working lives of our part-time PhD fellows. Many work at the highest of levels, both nationally and internationally — and in normal times they come to Maastricht in person for our unique PhD Dual Career Training Programme in Governance and Policy Analysis...

We are very happy to announce that Prof Kristof de Witte, our chair in Effectiveness and Efficiency of Educational Innovations, has been named Laureate of the Academy – Humanities 2020 by the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts. This is the academy’s most prestigiou...

This is an extraordinary moment in world history. While it is too early to assess the global impact of the Black Lives Matter movement, emerging evidence indicates that it has made significant progress. The first significant impact of the protests has been the toppling of Confederate and slavery-rel...

Since the end of World War II, the United States of America has been the leading voice in the promotion of human rights, equality and non-discrimination. In fact, from 1933 to 1945, it was the US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who spearheaded the drafting and negotiations of the Universal Declaration ...

Empowering people to manage their own money with a one-off cash payment could have an enduring impact on homelessness, if the “beautifully surprising” results of a Canadian initiative are anything to go by. The New Leaf Project, a scheme led by Vancouver-based Foundations for Social Change (FSC) saw...

MPP alumnus Rodolpho Zannin Feijó joined the first online edition of the Maastricht University Alumni Week last month as a guest speaker from his home city of Curitiba in Brazil. During a lively conversation with current and prospective students, he shared his experience as head of the city’s Intern...