PhD alumnus and affiliated researcher Ayo Adedokun was awarded the Leiden University Student platform (LUS) teaching prize, for best lecturer of the year, on 6 September 2021. “Teaching is not merely a profession; it’s a calling,” said Adedokun, who was clearly moved upon receiving the award from the LUS Chair. The prize itself covers 25,000 euros to spend on innovation in teaching and learning, and membership of the University’s Teachers’ Academy. Adedokun started as lecturer at Leiden Universi...

A new Open Access Handbook on Social Protection Systems features contributions from UNU-MERIT researchers Franziska Gassmann, Tamara Kool and Zina Nimeh, as well as alumni Mira Bierbaum, Victor Cebotari and Eszter Timar. This Handbook provides a comprehensive and globally relevant overview of the instruments, actors and design features of social protection systems, as well as their application and impacts in practice. It is the first book that centres around system building globally, a theme tha...

Affiliated researcher and PhD alumnus Dr Carlos Cadena Gaitán has been named one of the ‘21 Heroes of 2021’ by the Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative, a global forum co-sponsored by UN-Habitat. Early in the pandemic, while working as Transport Secretary of Medellín in Colombia, Carlos took a leading role in distributing Personal Protective Equipment to the city’s residents, while personally fighting the virus on public transport with disinfectant sprays. But coronavirus was not the only ki...

Desertification may still seem like a far-off scenario for Dutch farmers, but it is a growing problem worldwide. The use of pesticides in agriculture, as well as the focus on monoculture, is depleting farmland to the point that it becomes lifeless land and ultimately desert. UM students Vincent and Laura Nieboer, inspired by their father, came up with an accessible concept to help farmers worldwide stop this process. They recently pitched their idea at the ‘Little Big Talks’ on the occasion of t...

We have received the shocking and tragic news of the sudden passing away of our Master’s alumnus Simon Neuland at the age of 30, last Friday. Simon was part of the 2013-14 cohort on our Master of Science in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP), in the Social Protection Specialisation. We remember Simon as a very cheerful person, smart, kind, supportive, and always helpful. From the accounts of all those who knew him, he was a fine human being who will be utterly missed. The staff and ...

As director of a PhD programme with part-time professional participants who actively choose to study, I often hear myself saying that I have the best students. A programme with adults who re-enter education for the sake of learning and joy brings a student population that is mature, diverse, enthusiastic and needs no hand-holding. Recently, however, I realised that I not only have the best students – I also have the best alumni! Of course I’ve known that for a while already, as each year some of...

MPP alumnus Rodolpho Zannin Feijó joined the first online edition of the Maastricht University Alumni Week last month as a guest speaker from his home city of Curitiba in Brazil. During a lively conversation with current and prospective students, he shared his experience as head of the city’s International Affairs Office and looked back on his Master’s studies in Maastricht. Here are six highlights from the conversation. A double-degree from United Nations University and Maastricht University ha...

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. When I started the PhD, I was teaching at the University of Pristina in Kosovo, and I was trying to develop my research skills, get a PhD and become a researcher and lecturer. Then in the meantime, wh...

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 markets, stopped production in industrial factories and suffocated the economy. In so doing it has uncovered alarming fault lines in the world of work. Many people in the knowledge economy are able to wor...

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic and precautionary measures have been elevated since then around the world, to contain the disease as much as possible. One important measure has been to close down all schools and universities and shifting to online education. For those of us working in the education sector, the shift to online teaching has been challenging, requiring us to revise our approaches to teaching and setting exams. New skills are...