News

Last week, we welcomed a new cohort of students, who have come from across the globe to join our Master of Science in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP) programme. Before diving into their studies, more than 80 students from 29 countries stepped into student life at UNU-MERIT through two intr...

By Shyama V. Ramani (Professorial Fellow, UNU-MERIT) and Maximilian Bruder (PhD fellow, UNU-MERIT). ChatGPT has been touted as a tool that is going to revolutionise the workplace and home. AI systems like it have the potential to enhance productivity but could also displace jobs. The ChatGPT website...

Lessons from the three-day event in Rio de Janeiro By Mercedes Menéndez, Carlo Pietrobelli and Jorge Valverde From 20 to 22 July 2023, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) met for a three-day conference in Rio de Janeiro. There, the UNU-MERIT UNESCO Chair on Science, Technology ...

By Luk Van Langenhove and Luc Soete, former directors of UNU-CRIS and UNU-MERIT Hans van Ginkel, who passed away on Thursday, 27 July 2023, was a formidable figure by any standard. He was also one of those rare individuals who knew he could make a difference − and so he did through his times in char...

A post by Cristina Mancigotti, Capacity Development Coordinator at UNU-MERIT’s Capacity Development Office  Students consider dropping out of courses for a number of reasons, but our research shows that peer discussions and local context examples during class sessions can increase engagement a...

New pilot programme provides online certification to professional education – and enhanced employment value As a working professional, Joshua Antwi from Ghana was unable to enroll in UNU-MERIT’s full-time Master in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP) programme, despite his desire to acqu...

   European Innovation Scoreboard 2023 released today The twenty-second edition of the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS), which provides a comparative analysis of the research and innovation performance of EU Member States and selected third countries, was published today, 6 July 2023. The ...

Participants share their key takeaways from UNU-MERIT’s Migration Management Diploma Programme The Migration Management Diploma Programme (MMDP) is a capacity development programme which has been offered by UNU-MERIT since 2013. This programme is designed for government officials working in mi...

  UNU-MERIT affiliated researcher nominated for thesis-based educational game In 2016, Irina Burlacu de Paoli (UNU-MERIT PhD alumna and external lecturer at Maastricht University’s Summer Programme in European Studies) created the Mobility Era Game, a research-based financial literacy boa...

A post by Alex Hunns, social protection researcher at UNU-MERIT New UNU research explores the extent to which climate crises affect 20 of the world’s largest refugee settlements  Encampment has defined refugee policy since the Second World War, and refugees fleeing conflict and persecution in their ...

  Meet the new UNU-MERIT board member Behnam Taebi As a child, Behnam Taebi was interested in nothing more than understanding how everything works, making his education and training as a material science engineer an obvious professional choice. Now, however, Taebi works as a leading ethicist an...

Six questions with UNESCO Chair speaker and Duke University professor Gary Gereffi Few understand global value and supply chains – let alone the differences between them – more deeply than Gary Gereffi, a Duke University professor who has been studying our global production frameworks in...

  Episode 12 of the Director’s Corner Podcast series: Director Bartel Van de Walle speaks with Sanae Okamoto, researcher at UNU-MERIT In this conversation, Bartel and Sanae discuss – among other related topics – the findings of a new report from the United Nations University Climate...

UNU-MERIT UNESCO Chair event examines investment strategies for climate and development goals When it comes to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, who will finance the investments needed to do so, and will the funding sources be domestic or foreign, public or private, or from debts or gr...

  A Q&A with innovation and technology policy expert Hugo Hollanders Few are better suited to discuss innovation policy at the pan-European level than Hugo Hollanders, Senior Researcher at UNU-MERIT and acting unit head of its Economics of Innovation and Technology Unit. For almost 25 years...

The Dutch Minister of Defence, Kajsa Ollongren, tells UNU-MERIT how the Netherlands seeks to support United Nations operations in Europe and abroad   Given its small population (17.5 million) and geographical footprint (with one-fifth the land area of an average U.S. state), the Netherlands has...

  United Nations University – MERIT · What do “green windows of opportunity” mean for developing countries?   Episode 11 of the Director’s Corner Podcast series: Director Bartel Van de Walle speaks with Dr. Rasmus Lema, Associate Professor at UNU-MERIT In this conversatio...

A post by Akorshi Sengupta, Alumni Officer at UNU-MERIT          Nexus is a career fair organised by the UNU-MERIT Alumni Office for the purpose of bringing together organisations and candidates who are engaged in societally-minded work. As a UN University, UNU-MERIT supports the furthering of ...

A Q&A with IPCC coordinating lead author Maarten van Aalst   About one month ago, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a 37-page summary of its starkest findings on the state of our planet: the IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report. In short, it states that we are not only...

Article co-authored by Yannick Markhof, PhD fellow at UNU-MERIT [Reprinted by permission from VoxDev; Philip Wollburg and Alberto Zezza] Insights from high-frequency phone survey data collection reveal that access, rather than hesitancy, prevents vaccine uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa. COVID-19 vaccin...