News

A new report based on a Horizon 2020 monitoring exercise, featuring contributions from UNU-MERIT’s Ad Notten, confirms the continued progress of EU Open Science. With a steady increase over the years and an average success rate of 83% open access to scientific publications, the European Commis...

After struggling for 39 years to develop a fertile ground for democratic governance, Nigeria had its turning point in May 1999 when it became the world’s fourth largest democracy. This came after 16 years of brutal military rule. Despite complaints of fraud by political opposition in each election h...

Time will tell, but today, one and a half years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the “gloom-and-doom” predictions of worldwide recession, major disruptions in international trade, and rapidly rising unemployment appear to have been exaggerated. As the International Monetary Fund pointed ...

In a 2012 Nature article, provocatively titled ‘Conform and be funded’, Joshua Nicholson and John Ioannidis showed that few of the most highly cited US biomedical scientists received funding from the country’s National Institutes of Heath. They attributed this to a reluctance at the agency to suppor...

We held the closing ceremony for our Master’s in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP) on 10 June 2021 to commemorate the past academic year and to celebrate the success of the cohort. After a year of COVID-19, this event brought many students and faculty together for the first time, and was a m...

For many researchers working on projects that spanned international borders, the imposition of travel restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a rapid change in ways of working. Drawing on their own experience and those of colleagues of carrying out fieldwork during the pandemi...

The institute showed its resilience in 2020, with staff showing incredible levels of commitment, strength and resourcefulness, which leaves the institute in a strong position to face the ongoing challenges and to take the opportunities that will be available as the global community looks to ‘build b...

Knowledge 2 Knowledge Entrepreneurship, Côte d’Ivoire, is a one-year capacity-building training programme to help knowledge institutes in Côte d’Ivoire to foster an entrepreneurial mindset and skills in their students. The project hopes to achieve a lasting positive and tangible impact on job creati...

Our quarterly migration newsletter aims at keeping you up-to-date on our migration activities, events and publications at UNU-MERIT and its School of Governance. You can read the newsletter online or subscribe to the e-zine. Find out more...

This time Dr Mindel van der Laar (MvdL) caught up with Eliana Rubiano Matulevich and her supervising team composed of Prof Melissa Siegel (MS), Dr Ortrun Merkle (OM) and Dr Lisa Anderson (LA). Eliana will shortly defend her thesis on “Essays on conflict-induced displacement and gender in Colombia”....

This time we catch up virtually with Purity Njagi who will shortly defend her thesis on “Financial risk, vulnerability and equity of access to health care services in Kenya”. ...

This time Dr Mindel van der Laar (MvdL) and Prof Kristof De Witte (KW) caught up with Gloria Bernal (GB) who will shortly defend her thesis “On improving education opportunities: preferences and performance of high school students in response to scholarships, information and co-education”...

The European Commission today released the European Innovation Scoreboard 2021, which was prepared and coordinated by our researchers Hugo Hollanders and Nordine Es-Sadki, with contributions from Adriana Rantcheva.  This year’s European Innovation Scoreboard is based on a revised framework, wh...

This time we catch up virtually with Maria Espinosa Romero, who will shortly defend her thesis on "The shadow of hierarchy in marine fisheries governance". Her research at UNU-MERIT contributes to the designing of policies that supports the sustainable development of fisheries....

Bruno Martorano, United Nations University; Francesco Iacoella, United Nations University; Laura Metzger, Harvard Kennedy School, and Marco Sanfilippo, Università di Torino Chinese investment in Africa has helped spark economic growth and improve social outcomes across the continent. Yet Chinese pro...

Two researchers from UNU-MERIT have won this year’s Best Paper Award from the Journal of Economic Psychology. The winning article, ‘Gender attitudes in the Arab region – The role of framing and priming effects’ was co-authored by among others Micheline Goedhuys and Eleonora Nillesen. Using survey da...

Three UNU-MERIT researchers contributed to the UNESCO Science Report 2021: Luc Soete and Hugo Hollanders among others co-authored the chapter on the European Union, while Shuan Sadreghazi wrote the chapter on Iran. In a preface to the 750-page document, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: &#...

“Hello everyone. First of all, I’d like to thank Julieta for having invited me to deliver this keynote and the MPP team for organizing this wonderful event. I’m honoured and delighted. Recent events have given credence to a buzzword used to describe certain markets: VUCA, as in Vol...

The impacts of COVID-19 have forced researchers to adapt quickly to working under unprecedented restrictions. Here we discuss a new toolkit for Remote Data Collection, gathering researchers’ solutions on everything from replacing face-to-face interaction to greater use of secondary data. The t...

Two professors and a Master’s alumna from UNU-MERIT have won the RWB Jackson Award 2021, for the most outstanding English-language article published in the Canadian Journal of Education. The award went to an article entitled, The Use of a Multidimensional Support Model to Examine Policies and Practi...