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 COVID restrictions, we have been able to move on with the Strategic Plan and its implementation. We’ve made several steps in the past month and actually created an Implementation Timeline page on our we...
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 favourably on the College of Charleston. Prof. Siegel received her Bachelors in Economics with a Minor in Business from the College of Charleston and graduated from the Honors College in 2003. Prof. M...
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 Institute. ...
Our Master of Science in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP) made it into the Top 20 of the Going BEYOND Award from the ‘Global Business School Network’, a non-profit organisation founded by the World Bank in 2003, based in Washington DC, USA. The award recognises programmes and initiatives that demonstrate a positive impact on society, and that go BEYOND traditional offerings from academic institutions and research journals. In particular, winning entries should show how they: Empower and...
On 3 November 2021, students of the Master’s of Science in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP) presented papers that they had written for their Public Policy course. Their papers variously analysed the influence of civil society in the policy process of a selected county and on a selected policy problem, and the event aimed to encouraged open debate. ...
A post by Lisa Färber, former Student Ambassador on our MSc. in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP) … Just a couple of years ago, I was looking for a truly future-oriented Master’s programme. It’s a competitive market, with glossy brochures and slick videos all over social media. But what I’ve always found most helpful is the ‘word of mouth’: i.e. hearing first-hand from alumni or current students what a course is like in practice. So when I saw the advert for the new MPP Ambas...
It’s actually pretty exciting to see what is happening on the comprehensive innovation frontlines. As we said in a previous podcast, our Comprehensive Innovation teams are actually the trailblazers to explore and build on that concept of comprehensive innovation. I was meeting with the team leads last week and they were telling me what they were doing in the meantime. And it was actually quite fascinating to see how they approached their challenge on comprehensive innovation. One of the teams wa...
This month is interesting for a number of reasons, so maybe I can start with some of the meetings I will have this month. Our UNU Rector is on a European tour. He’s in in Paris already as we speak, but then he will visit UNU-CRIS, our sister institute in Bruges. He will then visit The Hague. He’s unfortunately not able to come to Maastricht. And then he carries on to UNU-EHS in Bonn. So he’s visiting Europe for a number of reasons. ...
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 memorable event on many fronts. The event was moderated by Academic Programme Director Julieta Marotta and Professor Franziska Gassmann, and included talks from the MPP student ambassador, student gove...