Michelle González Amador – who is currently completing her full-time PhD at UNU-MERIT – has been involved with the multi-institutional initiative Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG) for several years and was previously the organiser of the Latin America and Caribbean Working Group. One of the projects that emerged from this working group was a Summer of Science Program, the goal of which is to support female students from Indigenous communities in Mexico as they design and execu...
By Victor Osei Kwadwo, researcher and lecturer at UNU-MERIT In March 2023, three friends and I – all of us graduates of UNU-MERIT’s PhD programme – were thrilled when we stumbled upon a research fellowship opportunity in Africa, our home continent. Unfortunately, it turned out that the call was for individual three-month research stays. Our lives (some of us being parents) and newly launched careers simply wouldn’t bend that far. But, as any good scholar knows, constraints breed creativity...
When it comes to summarizing all that an institute as diverse as UNU-MERIT achieves in a year, where does one begin? Our work spans education programmes and capacity development efforts to media engagement and thought leadership to research projects big and small, and so much more. Nevertheless, we’ve done our best to give a snapshot of UNU-MERIT’s impact in 2023 through these five key contributions to sustainable development: Responded to the climate crisis Few parts of life fail t...
Researcher and photographer Mariajose Silva Vargas is about to complete her full-time PhD at UNU-MERIT (defending on 24 January) and now works as a Research and Policy Manager at Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab Europe (J-PAL Europe). In this interview, she shares some highlights from both her photography work and her PhD journey, and explains how the two perfectly complemented each other. Mariajose’s online photography portfolio can be found on her personal website. What is the motiv...
Tips and tricks from our dual career PhD fellows To kick off the 2023–2024 academic year, three of our dual career PhD fellows – Ari Perdana, Ilsa Meidina and Laisa Daza Obando – held a panel discussion about careers in multilateral development banks, describing their personal experiences of working in these organisations and offering advice for those wanting to enter the field. Here’s a short summary of what they had to share. What are multilateral development banks (MDBs) and what do they do? ...
On 28-29 September, UNU-MERIT held its annual Internal Conference — an intensive two-day gathering that convened all of our PhD fellows (both full-time and dual career), researchers and professors for an in-person research exchange. During this much-anticipated event, our academic community members showcased their scientific endeavours to their peers, received valuable feedback, gained new perspectives and inspiration from two esteemed external keynote speakers, and enjoyed a social evening out ...
Our quarterly newsletter rounds up the latest news and events from UNU-MERIT and its School of Governance. We explore the push and pull of international development: innovation through science and entrepreneurship, and governance through public policy analysis. ...
Our ‘Dual Focus PhD’ series tracks the working lives of our part-time PhD fellows. Many work at the highest of levels, both nationally and internationally — and in normal times they come to Maastricht in person for our unique PhD Dual Career Training Programme in Governance and Policy Analysis (GPAC²). This time, our Head of Communications, spoke with Rodrigo Lopez and Giovanna Mazzeo Ortolani who just started their PhD. Diego: Giovanna and Rodrigo, welcome to UNU-MERIT! Could you tell me a lit...
The World Bank launched its Development Impact blog on 1 April 2011, and has since published exactly 1500 posts. To celebrate turning 10, the editors of the blog decided to replace its meteor logo with something that better captures the aim of development research: i.e. to inform on the range of potential outcomes and choices in policy design and development processes. Responding to a call for artistic ideas, our Bolivian-Italian PhD fellow Mariajose Silva-Vargas sent in the image above, which w...
PhD fellow Mariajose Silva-Vargas from UNU-MERIT and graduate student Francesco Loiacono from the Institute for International Economic Studies have been awarded two grants — from the Peace & Recovery Competitive Fund from Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the Private Enterprise Development in Low Income Countries (PEDL) research initiative — for a total of US$ 100,000 to study labour market integration of refugees in developing countries. Refugees and access to labour mark...