New investigative podcast by UNU-MERIT alumnus narrates the story of this contentious policy   In 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to declare bitcoin as an official currency alongside the U.S. dollar. But almost two years after this law came into effect, the initiative remains a failure. Bitcoin has barely been adopted by the population and the country is nearly 30 percent down in its cryptocurrency investment. [1] So why did the Salvadoran government think its Bitcoi...

Lessons from the three-day event in Rio de Janeiro By Mercedes Menéndez, Carlo Pietrobelli and Jorge Valverde From 20 to 22 July 2023, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) met for a three-day conference in Rio de Janeiro. There, the UNU-MERIT UNESCO Chair on Science, Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development in Latin America organized a panel focused on the potential effects of the new techno-economic paradigm for Latin-American countries, entitled “The dual tran...

A colleague, friend and trusted advisor to many of us across the institute, Prof. Gabriela Dutrénit has worked with UNU-MERIT for decades, as a lecturer on our DEIP innovation workshops, and as a member of our International Advisory Board. In this brief portrait, Howard Hudson interviews Prof. Dutrénit to find out more about the woman behind the titles. … Born in 1957 in Uruguay, Gabriela has been an activist, community coordinator and human rights defender for almost half a century. A leader of...

Walking 4 SDGs UNU-MERIT staff and students travel virtually to Instituto Terra, Brazil, in support of SDG13 Enter keywords...

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...

While the rise of populist politicians in the Europe and the US gets a lot of attention from the media and researchers alike, the drivers of the populism taking hold in emerging and developing economies still receives relatively little scrutiny. In a new working paper we provide new evidence tracing the rise of populism in Brazil – through both the victory of presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2002 and Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 – to regional economic shocks caused by a process of trade liberal...

We are delighted to announce that Dr. Carlos Cadena Gaitán, a graduate of our PhD programme, has been named Transport Secretary for the City of Medellín, Colombia. Dr. Cadena Gaitán is a well-known transport and environmental activist. He is co-founder of La Ciudad Verde (the Green City) initiative, project coordinator of the Low Carbon City Forum, and various other artistic and cultural organisations. In recognition of his work, he received the ‘Future Sustainability Leader’ award in Oslo in Ju...

I previously worked at the UN ECLAC in Santiago de Chile, in a division that has partnered with UNU-MERIT on various projects. For two years I worked under Mario Cimoli, who used to be a colleague of UNU-MERIT Director, Bart Verspagen. It was Mario who first told me about the programme. Then Alejandro Lavopa, a PhD fellow at UNU-MERIT at the time, visited ECLAC and suggested that I apply for the PhD programme. So I learned about it by word of mouth....

“We must build bridges, meet the different actors working in the country by developing different forms of science communication – journalism, dissemination, education – and enrich each other from these differences.” Prof. Daniela Hirschfeld ...

The Peruvian in-service programme is a nationwide intervention intended to improve teachers’ ability to perform, and its final objective is to increase student achievement. The programme, delivered since 2008, includes a three-year systematic process of monthly meetings with a supervisor (coach), which usually take the form of personal coaching, workshops and conferences. During those meetings, the coach discusses directly how to improve with the selected teachers and suggests pedagogical proces...