Technology is well-known for increasing efficiency and productivity – but it also has more complex ‘darker’ sides. In your PhD thesis, which you defend on 16 November 2021 in Maastricht, you investigate the willingness of government employees in Bhutan to use new e-government systems. Can you tell us more about your research?...
Forty-five years ago today ― on 1 September 1975 ― the United Nations University (UNU) commenced operations in Tokyo with a staff of fewer than 30 individuals and an annual budget of just over 3 million USD. Today, UNU has grown into a global organisation with a presence in more than a dozen countries, a personnel complement of some 670, and an annual budget of nearly 55 million USD. The mission of UNU remains unchanged: to contribute, through collaborative research and education, to efforts to ...
An enduring goal of Migration Studies is to explain why people migrate: why some move and others do not. While the reasons to explain the migration of an individual are going to be different from those to explain an aggregate flow of many hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals, no individual is totally isolated from the broader context of the group within which he or she lives and moves....
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, FDI, R&D collaboration, to sociology and political economy studies. It sits squarely between economics and management, often cross-fertilising between the two subjects. Indeed, a number of UNU-MERIT...
A joint post by Claudia Abreu Lopes and Sanae Okamoto The new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been spreading rapidly but at a different rate in different countries. A variety of emergency responses and policy strategies have been implemented with varying outcomes so far. The Asian countries and territories that were first hit by the outbreak have built on responses to previous epidemics such as SARS. Other countries are learning from this but also adopting their own strategies. It’s possible...
A few years back, I came across someone who was enrolled on the EPRM course, while I was looking for an expert in primary health care on LinkedIn. Exploring the programme content on the UNU-MERIT website, I noticed that this blended course aims to extend the research knowledge and analytical skills of working professionals through its five comprehensive modules. Overall, my goal is to directly work with the government personnel, policymakers and relevant stakeholders for policy change based on f...
Beyond Static Inequality, Thailand “A recent study reveals that in OECD countries, children from poor families would need at least 150 years to reach the average income level, while in some developing countries such as Brazil, Colombia and South Africa, it could take as long as 300 years.” Enter keywords...
Today is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi — and the day Prime Minister Modi had planned to make India “open defecation free”. Over the last five years millions of toilets have been built across the country and its citizens have been “nudged” to use them in various ways. To recognise the reduction in open defecation brought about by the Swachh Bharath Abhiyan (SBA) or Clean India Mission, Modi received a Gates Foundation Global Goals Award on 24 S...
This study programme is very comprehensive and includes a blend of research tools that are relevant to developing countries and to practical work in the field. The best part, though, is that my studies are clearly connected to research and to strengthening policy and strategies. Another major aspect is that fellow participants come from all around the world: from Asia, Africa, and Europe – so I’ve gained exposure to numerous cultures and learned all their various problem-solving techniques. Fina...
I was born a long while ago on a snowy night in Oslo. This was not the Oslo of now, where a third of the population is either immigrant or born to immigrant parents. This was the Oslo of old, of presumed certainty of place and identity. My parents, both from southern India, had gone to live there three months earlier. Though pleased that I had safely arrived, I suspect that, in those days when hospital rooms did not come equipped with television screens, my father did wish, deep down, that my bi...