Four UNU-MERIT researchers (Sanae Okamoto, Shyama Ramani, Rasmus Lema and Alejandro Álvarez-Vanegas) have co-authored articles for a COP 28 bookazine from the global affairs media network Diplomatic Courier, entitled COP 28: Saving Gaia to Save Ourselves. This special edition, which was published on 21 November 2023, focused on three main questions: – How do we craft better collaborative learning ecosystems to better equip youth and adults to address the climate crisis? R...
The 2021 International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists highlights the instrumental role of prosecutorial services, in investigating and prosecuting not only killings but also threats of violence against journalists. This year’s campaign highlights the psychological trauma experienced by journalists, and stresses the need to investigate and prosecute anyone making such threats. To mark this year’s event, which coincided with the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to two inve...
A unique partnership between the United Nations University and Maastricht University in the south of the Netherlands, our Master in Public Policy and Human Development features seven specialisations. See our new video interviews for the inside track on all the above. ...
The current pandemic, the climate crisis and concerns over new technologies like Artificial Intelligence demand an open and clear dialogue between science and society. As we move forward to address these types of challenges, facts and scientific research need to feed community knowledge and play an important role in public decision-making. For this, effective research communication is key! Kendra Valck at the School of Business and Economics recently spoke about this topic with UNU-MERIT’s...
COVID-19 has brought a tsunami of change and impacted every facet and sector of society, including the lives of children, parents and teachers. UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently said that the coronavirus pandemic is the biggest global challenge since the Second World War. When K-12 schools will reopen in Canada remains an open question, and hope is quickly fading that students will be able to finish the 2019-20 academic year with face-to-face instruction. Ontario’s schools, for exam...
One of the most surprising and disruptive developments of the last few years has been the “fake news” phenomenon. It’s now increasingly clear who benefits in terms of power and influence; what’s less clear is why people continue to believe in it, even when “alternative facts” are categorically and repeatedly debunked. Back in 2016, UNU-MERIT was asked by the City of Knowledge in Panama to lead a science reporting workshop for journalists, communications officers and policymakers. We ambitiously ...
Earth, air, fire and water – not Afropop from the 1970s but essential elements from the ancient Greeks – which in our modern “comms ecosystem” roughly equate to website, press, events and media. Bear with me a moment and let me explain! Our website is the core, press gives oxygen, events are the crucible, and media (whether audio, video or social) are channels to the outside world. Here’s how they fit together at UNU-MERIT – and how a new “fifth element” ramps everything up to another level. Ear...
As the world’s largest online and user-generated encyclopaedia, Wikipedia is an education medium used by students across the word. However, as with textbooks and educational materials in any society, Wikipedia suffers from great divisions and has the potential to shape our view of the world. For every four articles about men, just one article exists about a woman – and just 10% of content creators and editors on Wikipedia are women. Even more worrying is that the trend is declining: UNU-MERIT re...
Trust in experts has plummeted in recent years, in our ‘post-truth‘ era. Yet humanity’s most complex problems — from violent extremism to food security to climate change — will never be solved by late-night tweets or political isolationism. What seems to be the key are partnerships: particularly between researchers and media professionals. All of which begs the question: how can experts reach the masses? How can they inform the public debate? And why is this importa...
Trump may lose, but will that be the end of ‘Trumpism’? As I write this in late October 2016, Washington DC is a divided city in a divided country. I am struck by the imminent sense of disaster — and the clearest sign of this is what we DON’T see, just days before the election on 8th November. Have you ever heard of a US election without countless placards in every neighbourhood? You might imagine ‘Clinton’ signs in the front yards of the affluent Northwest part of the city, interspersed w...