Midsummer, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) published the “E-Governance – A powerful tool toward resilient, inclusive and sustainable disaster risk management”. You contributed as an author on e-resilience and e-government. Can you please elaborate what the survey and publication are about?...
The EU’s innovation performance continues to improve, but further efforts are needed to ensure Europe’s global competitiveness. That is, according to the 2018 European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS), co-authored by Hugo Hollanders and Nordine Es-Sadki. This year’s edition reveals a positive trend in the majority of EU countries – most notably in Malta, the Netherlands, and Spain, with Sweden remaining the EU innovation leader. Watch the launch event recording here (25 June 2018)....
A joint post by Dr. Mindel van de Laar and Katerina Triantos. There’s a first time for everything. Recently, in partnership with the Dutch government and the SURF organisation, we’ve developed online courses to help students choose their tracks (the basic idea is that if they’re better informed from the start, they’re less likely to drop out). We piloted SMART Choices in the autumn of 2017 – and with some success, according to the student evaluations. We’ve now moved on to the SMART Tools part o...
In 2017, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced the end of net neutrality in the USA. The decision was taken unilaterally by FCC Chairman Commissioner, Ajit Pai, and other unelected board members, without consulting key actors from civil society. This decision was and is still being criticised even from within the Commission where the vote repealing net neutrality was extremely tight: just three votes to two. The move was also criticised by NGOs and international org...
Prof. Pierre Mohnen will lead UNU-MERIT’s stake in WATSON – a new 1 million euro innovation project funded by the European Commission. Part of the Horizon 2020 programme, WATSON is an 18-month project involving EU research institutions and SMEs working in Fintech, financial services and economics. We caught up with Pierre to find out more. What’s our role and who are the other partners? The WATSON project focuses on R&D tax incentives to promote innovation in Small and Medium-sized Ent...
Researcher Hugo Hollanders co-hosted the launch workshop of the new ‘European Observatory for Clusters and Industrial Change’ (EOCIC) on 22 January 2018. Held in Brussels, the workshop gathered around 40 participants including 10 invited experts, 18 representatives from the European Commission, plus consortium partners. This EC-funded project aims to help Europe’s regions and countries design better and more evidence-based cluster policies and initiatives. The observatory is designed to su...
Our Master in Public Policy and Human Development (MPP) offers six highly-specialised tracks. Deciding which one to follow is one of the most important decisions our students will make during their time at UNU-MERIT. In order to support them in this process, our instructors have developed a digital platform that provides additional information to current and prospective students. Each year students from across the world move to Maastricht for our award-winning Master’s programme. They come...
You defend your PhD thesis on 24 November. In your research, you study a remarkable ‘Case Management Information System’ in Kosovo. Can you briefly explain the background and why you decided to study it? / My research looks into the roll out of a ‘Case Management Information System’ (CMIS) in the judiciary of Kosovo, which began in 2001 and remains ongoing. ...
Why and how do some female child carers in Lesotho manage to stay in school despite being responsible for running a household? This was the question that researcher Brenda Yamba, originally from Zambia, wanted to answer. She defended her PhD at Maastricht University last June. “Brenda was what you might call a model student”, her supervisor Melissa Siegel says immediately. “In addition to being disciplined and eager to learn, she also dealt extremely well with feedback. She was hugely motivated ...
Information and communication technology is developing rapidly in Africa – but there are worrying trends, such as a growing digital divide between men and women, and between urban and rural areas. These are the basic findings of a new policy note by Prof. Samia Nour, an affiliated researcher at UNU-MERIT. The author investigates some of the main causes of the digital divide, including differences in economic development, literacy, schooling and education levels. She then delves into the major ch...