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UNU-MERIT UNESCO Chair event examines investment strategies for climate and development goals When it comes to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, who will finance the investments needed to do so, and will the funding sources be domestic or foreign, public or private, or from debts or gr...

  A Q&A with innovation and technology policy expert Hugo Hollanders Few are better suited to discuss innovation policy at the pan-European level than Hugo Hollanders, Senior Researcher at UNU-MERIT and acting unit head of its Economics of Innovation and Technology Unit. For almost 25 years...

The Dutch Minister of Defence, Kajsa Ollongren, tells UNU-MERIT how the Netherlands seeks to support United Nations operations in Europe and abroad   Given its small population (17.5 million) and geographical footprint (with one-fifth the land area of an average U.S. state), the Netherlands has...

  United Nations University – MERIT · What do “green windows of opportunity” mean for developing countries?   Episode 11 of the Director’s Corner Podcast series: Director Bartel Van de Walle speaks with Dr. Rasmus Lema, Associate Professor at UNU-MERIT In this conversatio...

A post by Akorshi Sengupta, Alumni Officer at UNU-MERIT          Nexus is a career fair organised by the UNU-MERIT Alumni Office for the purpose of bringing together organisations and candidates who are engaged in societally-minded work. As a UN University, UNU-MERIT supports the furthering of ...

A Q&A with IPCC coordinating lead author Maarten van Aalst   About one month ago, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a 37-page summary of its starkest findings on the state of our planet: the IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report. In short, it states that we are not only...

Article co-authored by Yannick Markhof, PhD fellow at UNU-MERIT [Reprinted by permission from VoxDev; Philip Wollburg and Alberto Zezza] Insights from high-frequency phone survey data collection reveal that access, rather than hesitancy, prevents vaccine uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa. COVID-19 vaccin...

Covering climate change to green tech, here are the key findings from this year so far! We’re halfway through our self-set timeline to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and fast approaching the 2030 deadline of the framework put forth in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, so it ...

A post by Maximilian Bruder, PhD fellow at UNU-MERIT Businesses are a key driver of economic growth, job creation and innovation, and they have a significant impact on the environment and society. The private sector therefore has a crucial role to play in attaining the SDGs, by providing a way of do...

In an effort to track the global alignment between science, technology and innovation (STI) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a consortium of seven universities led by UNU-MERIT researcher Tommaso Ciarli released the Steering Research and Innovation for Global Goals (STRINGS) report R...

Free tote bags! Photo corners! Q&As! Snacks! On Saturday 18 March 2023, UNU-MERIT opened its doors to the public for the second Master’s Open Day of the academic year, welcoming potential students to find out more about our MSc in Public Policy and Human Development programme (MPP for shor...

In the second webinar of the UNESCO Chair series on ‘Science, Technology and Innovation Policies for Sustainable Development in Latin America’, Dr. Pascual Restrepo (Assistant Professor of Economics at Boston University) gave a presentation on the ‘Origins and implications of the c...

World Water Day – held on 22 March every year since 1993 – raises awareness and inspires action to help the 2.2 billion people who are living today without access to safe water. At UNU-MERIT, we’re excited to share that we have three World Water Day (WWD) events coming up that all ...

A post by Laura Cleton, researcher at UNU-MERIT. Today, 8 March, is International Women’s Day: a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. It also marks a call to action to educate and raise awareness for women’s equality and call for positive change ...

Last week at UNU-MERIT, we held our first-ever PhD Research Week, an intensive five-day event where we gathered all of our full-time and part-time PhD fellows together in person to present their research to each other and to staff members. But it wasn’t only about work – the group also e...

Today marks the end of our PhD Research Week and to celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, this blog post is dedicated to the work of five of our talented female PhD fellows who are all working on topics related to gender and the empowerment of women and girls.     ...

Paul David – who passed away on January 23rd 2023 – was not just a brilliant economic historian and an exceptional scholar of the economics of technology who established the Stanford economics department as one of the leading research centres in the field, he was also very much a Europea...

In October 2022, UNU-MERIT’s UNESCO Chair on Science, Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development for Latin America and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) delivered a Training Programme on Productive Development and Competitiveness in Honduras. The training programme was orie...

 United Nations University – MERIT · Director’s Corner Podcast – Jan 2023   In this episode of the Director’s Corner Podcast, Director Bartel Van de Walle speaks with Holly Tammik, new Communications Officer at UNU-MERIT.  In this conversation, Bartel shares among other thing...

Our quarterly newsletter rounds up the latest news and events from UNU-MERIT and its School of Governance. We explore the push and pull of international development: innovation through science and entrepreneurship, and governance through public policy analysis. ...