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Like so many other researchers sitting at home, watching the news about COVID-19, I have been impressed at how virologists, epidemiologists and other medical experts have caught the ears of national policymakers, business leaders and the general public. Suddenly, scientific facts and evidence bask i...

A joint post by Sam Jones, Eva-Maria Egger and Ricardo Santos, United Nations University – WIDER As the COVID-19 virus has spread across the globe, developing countries are starting to enact many of the same policies used in China, Europe and North America to contain the virus. But are these p...

The swift spread of COVID-19 required an urgent response from many institutions – and universities were no exception. Classes were quickly moved online, which proved to be a challenge for instructors and students alike. To get a glimpse into how our Master’s programme dealt with this transition, we ...

There’s a saying in English: “Necessity is the mother of invention” – but this has always struck me as incomplete. Necessity is also the mother of innovation, i.e. a novelty that generates a profit or something of value for a community, as in a social innovation. What follows is the story of our dri...

COVID-19 has brought a tsunami of change and impacted every facet and sector of society, including the lives of children, parents and teachers. UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently said that the coronavirus pandemic is the biggest global challenge since the Second World War. When K-12 scho...

                                #EarthDay2020 The Green Academy Project proved to me yet again that if we as academics participate in co-designed projects with social enterprises and NGOs, we can create real community value as well as scientific papers! This project is also a milestone for SITE4Soci...

The Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), one of the most cited inter-disciplinary journals in the social sciences, marked its 50th anniversary in 2019. Although considered by many to be a business discipline, ‘International Business’ today covers a wide intellectual space from trade, FD...

What are these corona-days like for students in Maastricht? How is the coronavirus affecting their studies and other aspects of their lives? Maastricht University’s independent newspaper Observant is running a series of interviews with current students to find out how they are coping with the ...

A post by Mantej Pardesi, alumnus of our Master’s programme in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP). … The novel coronavirus has put an emergency brake on the express train of our global economy. This single-celled micro-organism has grounded fleets of jumbo jets, crashed stock mark...

On 26 March 2020, an utterly divided EU emerged from the European Council dedicated to European measures aimed at managing the severest crisis since 1929, one far worse  than the 2012-2017 crisis. The coronavirus pandemic and the transpiring economic and social crises present Europe with an extraord...

Built specifically for students of public policy, the 'Metropolitan: A Sustainable Transit Simulation' game challenged participants to develop a sustainable public transit infrastructure in their assigned city. “Last year’s simulation was based on the Syrian refugee crisis and the year before it was...

The United Nations University (UNU) is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Bartel Van de Walle as the next Director of the United Nations University Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT). Prof. Van de Walle will take up his position o...

The European Observatory for Clusters and Industrial Change has published the 2020 edition of the European Panorama of Clusters and Industrial Change, written by UNU-MERIT researchers Hugo Hollanders and Iris Merkelbach. The report presents an overview of how clusters contribute to the competitivene...

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic and precautionary measures have been elevated since then around the world, to contain the disease as much as possible. One important measure has been to close down all schools and universities and shifting to o...

For every Master’s Open Day, we welcome prospective students and give them a general overview of the programme and its seven specialisations. We also invite our alumni to share their views on how the programme prepared them for their careers in international development, among others. On our latest ...

A joint post by Claudia Abreu Lopes and Sanae Okamoto  The new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been spreading rapidly but at a different rate in different countries. A variety of emergency responses and policy strategies have been implemented with varying outcomes so far. The Asian countries and ...

Prof. René Belderbos has been awarded the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) silver medal for ‘exceptional’ intellectual contributions. The award was part of the journal’s 50-year anniversary celebrations, held in 2019 in Copenhagen, Denmark. We caught up with René to find ...

“My dear colleagues, the strength of our United Nations is YOU – our committed and dedicated personnel. Events have moved at alarming speed over the past two weeks. This crisis is unprecedented. And I’m proud of how – together – you are adapting so quickly. I understand the enormous stre...

In times of crisis, we tap untested resources and resilience. We need creativity to escape a terrible ‘new normal’ and determination to endure the journey. In short, we have to innovate and persevere. On 18 March 2020, for the first time in our history, one of our doctoral students defen...

A few years back, I came across someone who was enrolled on the EPRM course, while I was looking for an expert in primary health care on LinkedIn. Exploring the programme content on the UNU-MERIT website, I noticed that this blended course aims to extend the research knowledge and analytical skills ...