News

Ana Cristina Calderon Ramirez, a PhD Fellow on our GPAC² programme, has beaten around 100 other researchers to win Best Paper Award at the International Public Procurement Conference 7 (IPPC7). The paper, ‘Elements of public procurement reform and their effect on the public sector in Latin Ame...

“I was born in Uganda, I am Rwandan, but I grew up in South Africa.” This is my standard response to the question “Where are you from?” – because I genuinely feel like I am from all three countries....

Dr. Özge Bilgili, Theme Leader for Integration, Social Cohesion and Transnationalism Research, has been selected for the OECD’s Thomas J. Alexander Fellowship for 2017. During the project period at the Directorate for Education and Skills in Paris, she will focus on migrant children’s educational ac...

As we approach the first anniversary of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), on 25 September 2016, at least one thing is clear: nothing will be achieved without a joined-up approach and an integrated strategy. In practice, this means that the UN’s silos will need to start talking the same la...

This year, we stayed in our own new Sphinxkwartier neighbourhood to celebrate the closing ceremony of our Master’s programme in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP). The Muziekgieterij, the Maastricht pop concert hall located a few minutes down the Boschstraat in the renovated Timmerfabri...

The annual European Innovation Scoreboard, co-authored by Hugo Hollanders, Nordine Es-Sadki and Minna Kanerva, provides a comparative analysis of innovation performance in EU Member States, other European countries, and regional neighbours. It assesses relative strengths and weaknesses of national i...

Around 168 million children worldwide are involved in child labour, according to recent ILO estimates. More than half of them, 85 million, are doing hazardous work. These numbers have fallen in recent years, but trends vary across regions, countries and sectors and the figures remain alarmingly high...

Alumnus and affiliated researcher Dr. Richard Bluhm has won this year’s Prize for Excellence in Applied Development Research from the German Economic Association (VfS). He was awarded first prize in the Young Researcher category for his doctoral thesis on ‘Growth Dynamics and Development. Essa...

When Isaac Attie arrived in Bolivia in 1917, he brought all his worldly belongings in a single suitcase. He had travelled to Latin America in search of a safer and better life: far from the conflict and turmoil of Europe and the Middle East....

“Almost three quarters (73%) of 18 to 24-year-olds said they had voted to stay in the EU, compared with 62% of 25 to 34s and 52% of 35 to 44s,” noted a BBC article after last week’s referendum. But “support for Brexit formed a majority among every other age category and grew ...

Today is B-Day, when British voters decide whether to leave or stay in the European Union. For anyone fond of buzzwords the choice is simple: Brexit or Bremain? Yet the data feeding into the referendum are more complex and, as shown time and again, woefully open to manipulation. One of the main argu...

Clinical trials are an essential part of developing new drugs — but how can we limit or prevent ethical violations? How can we ensure effective governance, checks and balances, amid a proliferation of stakeholders? Part-time PhD fellow Farida Lada gives the background on her research and journ...

Each year we join the institutional and policy meetings of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM). At this year’s event, the topics mainly focused on promoting justice through research and practice — but the most poignant session for me was on cultural competen...

A joint post by Kristjana Sigurbjörnsdóttir, UNU-GEST and Ortrun Merkle, UNU-MERIT. On 19 June we mark the first anniversary of the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict. Established in 2015 the day aims to “raise awareness of the need to end conflict-related sex...

“This forum comes at a time when we need to disrupt the status quo in terms of how we do science and technology for development,” Dr. Gillian Marcelle, Trinidad & Tobago. “When you think about the industrial revolution, that is the biggest change we probably ever had. The SDGs ...

Alumnus and affiliated researcher Dr. Carlos Cadena Gaitán is one of seven emerging leaders worldwide shortlisted for the ‘Inspired Leadership Award 2016’. The award will be presented at ‘The Performance Theatre’ – featuring 150 global CEOs and change-makers from across business, policy and civil so...

Haiti is back in the news, following reports of vote rigging in its recent presidential elections. As the population struggles with further instability, part-time PhD fellow Corinne Bossé shares her research on this troubled Caribbean nation — research focusing on diaspora engagement, higher e...

I was born of a mixed family in the south of Italy, in the city of Benevento. That day it was raining cats and dogs, as on most days when important things happen to me – from graduating to getting married to finding a new job. Benevento (meaning either ‘Good wind’ or ‘Good event’) was named by the R...

The UN Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism, issued in January 2016, called for a comprehensive response to a growing threat. As a result the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO), like all other UN agencies, will be required to consider how it can contribute to a UN response in t...

As Africa’s economic outlook continues to improve it is now more crucial than ever to ensure that the next generation of African scholars and policy experts can meet the challenges of the 21st Century. Our CoLA initiative seeks to establish a network of young African researchers with the aim of givi...