News

Dr Rasmus Lema joined UNU-MERIT as an Associate Professor in January 2022. Rasmus’ broad research interests cover structural change and development, new and emerging technologies, and global value chains and innovation systems. He currently investigates economic development opportunities and constra...

A joint post by Dr Julieta Marotta & Abigail Daley “Because women have an incredible amount of power that should not be ignored when it comes to building a sustainable future.” International Women’s Day gives us a yearly moment to reflect on gender equality and remind ourselves of our progress a...

A colleague, friend and trusted advisor to many of us across the institute, Prof. Gabriela Dutrénit has worked with UNU-MERIT for decades, as a lecturer on our DEIP innovation workshops, and as a member of our International Advisory Board. In this brief portrait, Howard Hudson interviews Prof. Dutré...

A new paper co-authored by Prof. Luc Soete brings business and science perspectives to the most pressing global issues of our time. Set against the macro backdrops of climate change and the coronavirus pandemic, the authors investigate ‘technological sovereignty’ and ‘knowledge saf...

The circumstances are still what they are: a lot of colleagues have either had COVID or are still suffereing from it. So the institute is still mostly closed down, there are not many people around, so maybe it’s good that we try to take cover for the next few weeks. Nonetheless, despite the usual CO...

Two new flagship programmes from UNU-MERIT, coming under the banner of ‘Comprehensive Innovation for Sustainable Development‘ (CI4SD), feature in the first ever UN Climate Change Innovation Compendium, in chapters focusing on the Green Economy and on Capacity Strengthening. … We li...

In July 2021, several European countries including Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands were affected by catastrophic floods, causing deaths and widespread damage. Such extreme weather events are expected to increase in both frequency and severity in the coming decades, according to the latest repor...

Migrant returnees arrive to El Salvador from Belize, with the support of the IOM’s Assisted Voluntary Return Program. © IOM 2020 / Elena MONTOYA It is commonly understood by return and reintegration practitioners that the type of return, namely whether a person returned voluntarily or not, can influ...

Recent years have seen the topic of migration rise to the top of political agendas in many parts of the Global North, propelled by images of overcrowded boats on the Mediterranean and migrant caravans in Central America. In recent weeks tragic events have been unfolding a stone’s throw from the Neth...

Researcher Hugo Hollanders and Prof. Jo Ritzen contributed to the Global Knowledge Index 2021, commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation. The Global Knowledge Index monitors the knowledge status of 154 countries across areas ...

Prof. Melissa Siegel received the Distinguished Alumna Award from the College of Charleston, USA on 20 November 2021. This award was established to recognise those alumni who have made significant contributions to their professions or to their communities over a long period of time, thus reflecting ...

In this festive episode, Director Bartel Van de Walle speaks with our Master’s Student Ambassador Leopoldo Perez Obregon. Bartel shares his personal story, his understandings about science and academia, the challenges and advantages of online education and his vision for the future of the Inst...

TRANSFORM, an innovative training initiative that strengthens individual and institutional capacity for the management of national social protection systems in Africa, has launched a new website, redesigned and updated with the most up-to-date resources. Commissioned by the African Union, and implem...

A joint post by Ortrun Merkle, Loes van Heugten and Ashleigh Bicker Caarten … This year’s International Anti-Corruption Day has the hopeful motto: ‘Your right, your role: Say no to Corruption’, highlighting the important role that each individual, from politician to activist to citizen has in ...

On 25 November 2021, staff and students representing our Master of Science in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP) commemorated the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The event aimed to raise awareness about the issue, while also presenting the MPP’s...

In this first installment of our ‘Rethinking Research’ series, we speak with Dr. Nanditha Mathew, who leads our new research team entitled, ‘Conflicting and Complementary Policies for Development’. Head of Communications Howard Hudson put the questions to Nanditha in the cont...

Our ‘Comprehensive Innovation for Sustainable Development’ (CI4SD) team led by Dr. Lili Wang has won €250,000 in ‘Merian’ funding from the Dutch Research Council and the Chinese Academy of Sciences for a vertical farming project entitled, ‘GREENFARM’. Her team will work with counterparts...

Our Master’s alumna Claire Tan Sze Eng has won the best thesis award at the Dutch Demography Day 2021 for her dissertation entitled, ‘Returning to a home without a future: The effect of migrant trajectories and experiences on the reintegration of Albanian rejected asylum-seekers’. Based on some 40 i...

Our Master’s alumni Vivien Csapliczky (pictured far left) and Job Zomerplaag (pictured far right) have won the biennial ‘Kremers Award’ for having written the best dissertations on regional innovation from a socio-economic perspective. Their theses respectively focused on regional development ...

There were seven women and three children among the 27 people who tragically lost their lives in the English Channel this week. Women and children are frequently among those seeking a new life in Europe: as of November 21, this year 27.1% of migrants arriving by sea in the Mediterranean are women or...