News

The PhD was a process of transformation: to validate my skills and research while becoming a part of a community. I wanted to have that sense of purpose, that discipline and that network – these were all-important to me on my PhD journey. For me it was different when I started from when I finished. ...

As a journalist who is part of a news research team, I am required to produce extensive and in-depth news articles on varied topics like policy, development, human rights, environment and law. Hence I applied to study the Evidence-Based Policy Research Methods course at UNU-MERIT, a research and tra...

Water is not only critical for human life – it is also a precious economic, spiritual and cultural resource. In 2015, the UN General Assembly even recognised water as a human right. This newly minted human right is, however, under threat from trade and investment agreements, including the Investor-S...

I am sitting at my desk at home because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a safety precaution for myself, of course, but also an act of solidarity. Solidarity with experts and solidarity with informed decision makers. Suddenly, finally, everyone is listening to scientists – i.e. virologists – as much a...

PhD fellow Mariajose Silva-Vargas from UNU-MERIT and graduate student Francesco Loiacono from the Institute for International Economic Studies have been awarded two grants — from the Peace & Recovery Competitive Fund from Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the Private Enterprise Deve...

This series tracks news and views from our ‘Evidence-Based Policy Research Methods’ (EPRM) course. Many participants work at the highest of levels, both nationally and internationally, including for other sections of the UN system. In normal times, they come to the City of Maastricht in the Netherla...

Not the ‘classic’ Italian-Argentinian migration history, ours is more about those left behind and a return to the home country. Gaetano Bloise was born in 1895 in Cassano, a village in Calabria, the southmost region on the Italian peninsula. During World War I, he was injured at the infamous Battle ...

Like so many other researchers sitting at home, watching the news about COVID-19, I have been impressed at how virologists, epidemiologists and other medical experts have caught the ears of national policymakers, business leaders and the general public. Suddenly, scientific facts and evidence bask i...

A joint post by Sam Jones, Eva-Maria Egger and Ricardo Santos, United Nations University – WIDER As the COVID-19 virus has spread across the globe, developing countries are starting to enact many of the same policies used in China, Europe and North America to contain the virus. But are these p...

The swift spread of COVID-19 required an urgent response from many institutions – and universities were no exception. Classes were quickly moved online, which proved to be a challenge for instructors and students alike. To get a glimpse into how our Master’s programme dealt with this transition, we ...

There’s a saying in English: “Necessity is the mother of invention” – but this has always struck me as incomplete. Necessity is also the mother of innovation, i.e. a novelty that generates a profit or something of value for a community, as in a social innovation. What follows is the story of our dri...

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 scho...

                                #EarthDay2020 The Green Academy Project proved to me yet again that if we as academics participate in co-designed projects with social enterprises and NGOs, we can create real community value as well as scientific papers! This project is also a milestone for SITE4Soci...

The Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), one of the most cited inter-disciplinary journals in the social sciences, marked its 50th anniversary in 2019. Although considered by many to be a business discipline, ‘International Business’ today covers a wide intellectual space from trade, FD...

What are these corona-days like for students in Maastricht? How is the coronavirus affecting their studies and other aspects of their lives? Maastricht University’s independent newspaper Observant is running a series of interviews with current students to find out how they are coping with the ...

A post by Mantej Pardesi, alumnus of our Master’s programme in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP). … The novel coronavirus has put an emergency brake on the express train of our global economy. This single-celled micro-organism has grounded fleets of jumbo jets, crashed stock mark...

On 26 March 2020, an utterly divided EU emerged from the European Council dedicated to European measures aimed at managing the severest crisis since 1929, one far worse  than the 2012-2017 crisis. The coronavirus pandemic and the transpiring economic and social crises present Europe with an extraord...

Built specifically for students of public policy, the 'Metropolitan: A Sustainable Transit Simulation' game challenged participants to develop a sustainable public transit infrastructure in their assigned city. “Last year’s simulation was based on the Syrian refugee crisis and the year before it was...

The United Nations University (UNU) is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Bartel Van de Walle as the next Director of the United Nations University Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT). Prof. Van de Walle will take up his position o...

The European Observatory for Clusters and Industrial Change has published the 2020 edition of the European Panorama of Clusters and Industrial Change, written by UNU-MERIT researchers Hugo Hollanders and Iris Merkelbach. The report presents an overview of how clusters contribute to the competitivene...