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Two graduates from our Master’s programme in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP) were honoured at Maastricht University’s 39th anniversary ceremony on Friday 16 January 2015. Here they share their background stories and hopes for the future. Best Master’s thesis 2014 Lorraine Wong ...

Last week NASA tested its latest spacecraft, the Orion, at a cost of US$370m. The perfect test flight brought the USA one step closer to a manned mission to Mars, now scheduled for 2030. Conquering this new ‘frontier’ says a lot about a country, yet this and other kinds of innovation are...

The head of our Migration and Development group, Dr. Melissa Siegel, today joined a briefing for government officials at UN Headquarters in New York. She spoke about “migration as a development enabler”, giving particular attention to destination countries. In her presentation Dr. Siegel...

December 2014 marked the official start of renovations of the former Sphinx HQ in Maastricht. This will become the new home of UNU-MERIT from autumn 2015. At a landmark event, Director Bart Verspagen and City Councillor Gerdo van Grootheest symbolically demolished a wall to initiate the works. Vacan...

Linking education with innovation was a key part of our latest DEIP workshop, held in the Dominican Republic in the heart of the Caribbean. Our event, co-hosted with the Inter-American Development Bank and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology, brought researchers face-to-face wit...

Prof. Jo Ritzen was recently made a Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of SS. Cyril and Methodius (UCM) in Trnava, Slovakia. The degree was conferred during an international conference entitled, ‘Marketing Identity – Explosion of Innovations’. Jo Ritzen (Heerlen, 1945) is professoria...

Microsimulations are extremely important for testing various policies: from environment to health, tax-benefits to transport. Our recent conference covered the state-of-the-art in behavioural, spatial and static microsimulation thanks to the contributions of experts from Europe and beyond. At the co...

Jargon alienates readers and increases confusion and conflict, particularly on issues of global concern. To address this problem, UNU-MERIT began work on a “jargon busting” glossary back in 2012. Now, having won a PREMIUM proposal from Maastricht University, it will turn this glossary in...

Dr. Khalid Koser was appointed Extraordinary Professor in Conflict, Peace and Security at the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences of Maastricht University on 18 September 2014. “When is Migration a Security Issue?” was the title of his inaugural lecture. About the speaker Beside his position at Maast...

UNU is delighted to be supporting the Climate Summit 2014 hosted by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 23 September in New York. UNU will be hosting a thematic session on “The Economic Case for Climate Action” with global leaders and world renowned experts from China, India, Mexico, and the U...

In early September 2014, UNU-MERIT’s Director, Prof. Bart Verspagen, was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Oslo in Norway. The award came in the context of a long-term partnership between UNU-MERIT and Oslo’s TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture. TIK is well known for i...

Today more than 100 students from some 40 different countries joined our Master’s in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP) for the 2014-2015 academic year. Welcomed by Maastricht Mayor Onno Hoes, Director-Dean Bart Verspagen and Education Director Lutz Krebs, they were given a chance to mix and ...

Researcher Martin Rehm and co-authors Wim Gijselaers and Mien Segers have received the outstanding paper award of the EdMedia 2014 Conference. Their paper ‘Unified Yet Separated – Empirical Study on the Impact of Hierarchical Positions within Communities of Learning,’ was presented...

It is the only master’s programme in the world where graduates receive a degree from both the United Nations University (UNU) and Maastricht University (UM): Public Policy and Human Development (MPP). The programme was awarded the top position in this year’s guide to master’s programmes in the Nethe...

Refugees are set to make up a third of Lebanon’s population by late 2014. But the UN’s Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is massively underfunded in the country, forcing it to do more with less. In this blog post, MPP Master’s student Alessandro Pezzano shares his first experiences from the f...

UNU-MERIT’s founding director, Prof. Luc Soete, has been appointed to the high-level group of experts for research, innovation and science policy at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research. He joins 37 other experts from among others academia, industry and science. The group gives...

In our third blog post for World Refugee Day, we learn why higher education is important to refugees and why this kind of provision deserves greater political and academic attention. World Refugee Day marks a global recognition of those who have been forced to leave their homes to find sanctuary abr...

While the ISIS insurgency creates new flows of refugees, rejected asylum seekers and Kurds with European passports continue to return. Five very different encounters in Iraqi Kurdistan in the last week illustrate the contradictions and complexities of migration. This is our second blog post in a ser...

Ninety-three fresh graduates, representing about 40 nationalities, gathered with their friends and family at St. Janskerk in Maastricht for the closing ceremony of our Master’s programme in Public Policy and Human Development on 3 June 2014. Together they looked back on an intensive year of le...

Navneet Bhargava is one of the 93 students who will receive our double Master’s degree in Public Policy and Human Development, issued jointly by Maastricht University and United Nations University. Navneet’s testimonial about her study year in Maastricht was a highlight of the closing ce...