News

Michelle González Amador – who is currently completing her full-time PhD at UNU-MERIT – has been involved with the multi-institutional initiative Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG) for several years and was previously the organiser of the Latin America and Caribbean Working Group. ...

By Victor Osei Kwadwo, researcher and lecturer at UNU-MERIT In March 2023, three friends and I – all of us graduates of UNU-MERIT’s PhD programme – were thrilled when we stumbled upon a research fellowship opportunity in Africa, our home continent. Unfortunately, it turned out that the call was for ...

  In December, the latest international climate negotiations at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) made headlines around the world, as expected – but, as UNU-MERIT researcher Sanae Okamoto argues in an op-ed written for The Japan Times, two major achievements of thi...

  Last week, the European Commission launched its European Research Area Policy Platform, aspects of which researchers from UNU-MERIT and Maastricht University worked on as part of a larger consortium.   About the European Research Area Launched in 2000, the European Research Area (ERA) ai...

NEMO Kennislink – the Dutch science journalism platform of NEMO, the largest science museum in the Netherlands – has recently published two news pieces, one discussing how African remote employees could help solve the Netherlands’ major shortage of IT professionals, and the other f...

When it comes to summarizing all that an institute as diverse as UNU-MERIT achieves in a year, where does one begin? Our work spans education programmes and capacity development efforts to media engagement and thought leadership to research projects big and small, and so much more. Nevertheless, we&...

Researcher and photographer Mariajose Silva Vargas is about to complete her full-time PhD at UNU-MERIT (defending on 24 January) and now works as a Research and Policy Manager at Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab Europe (J-PAL Europe). In this interview, she shares some highlights from both her ...

By Conrad Nunnenmacher (PhD fellow, UNU-MERIT), Franziska Gassmann (Professorial Fellow, UNU-MERIT) and Julieta Morais (researcher, UNU-MERIT) The economic fallout of COVID-19 left people around the world facing a significant threat to their livelihood. As governments scrambled to mitigate the pande...

On 13 to 15 December, the Global Refugee Forum 2023 – the world’s largest international gathering on refugees – took place in Geneva, Switzerland. Launched in 2019 and held once every four years, the Forum assembles world leaders to discuss international progress on the four key objectiv...

The topic of health, both mental and physical, is taking an increasing amount of space in climate change discussions and negotiations. According to the World Health Organization, climate-related health damages are estimated to cost up to USD 4 billion by 2030, with outsize impacts on developing nati...

Our resident mental health expert, Sanae Okamoto, was recently interviewed by the UN Regional Information Centre (UNRIC) in Brussels about her research – below follows an except of the Q&A that was published on the UNRIC website on 5 December 2023. Can you elaborate on some specific exampl...

  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 wa...

New book distills three decades of learnings on survey design  Despite all the digital and virtual means by which the world is connected, when it comes to a researcher in, say, Brussels trying to get to know a community in, say, Almaty on a level that’s technical, substantial and deep enough to incl...

On 15 November, UNU-MERIT played host to the panel discussion ASEAN 2045: The Future of the Region as an Epicentrum of Growth, co-organised by the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia. Five ambassadors and diplomatic representatives from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) discussed h...

From 30 Nov to 12 Dec, the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) is taking place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Expectations are high for the year’s climate negotiations, which will focus on combatting temperature rise and the conclusion of the first global stocktake, which cr...

Machine learning (a subfield of artificial intelligence) is now routinely used by policymakers in the design, calibration and evaluation of public policies. Solving these prediction policy problems requires tools that are tuned to minimise prediction errors, but also frameworks to ensure that models...

3 questions with our expert Julieta Marotta for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women According to UN Women, almost one in three women and girls have been “subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both, at least once...

By Soha Youssef, Learning and Development Coordinator at UNU-MERIT and alumna of the 2018/19 MPP cohort (specialised in Migration Studies) In October 2023, the Dutch Migration Minister Eric van der Burg met with several Egyptian government officials (including the Development Minister and the Minist...

Highlights from UNU-MERIT’s Public Policy MPP Conference 2023 By Victor Osei Kwadwo, researcher and lecturer at UNU-MERIT On 8 November 2023, UNU-MERIT played host to thought-provoking discussions at our annual Public Policy MPP Conference, a key fixture on our MSc in Public Policy and Human Develop...

The Rector and AI expert delivers flagship lecture on the accelerating technology   On 26 October 2023, UNU-MERIT hosted the seventh instalment of its flagship Charles Cooper Memorial Lecture Series, named for the institute’s first director. United Nations University (UNU) Rector and artificial...