A new partnership between Northeastern’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs (Policy School) and the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR), formalized today with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), will harness advanced data visualization and other areas of expertise to promote global governance solutions and address growing pressures on the multilateral system.
Collaboration will focus on a new multi-year initiative managed by UNU-CPR – the Global Governance Innovation Platform – which will identify, explore and visualize innovative governance practices, serving as templates for new multilateral institutions and platforms or inspiring reforms to existing ones.
UNU-CPR Director and Director of the Global Governance Innovation Platform, Dr David Passarelli, noted: “This partnership is rooted in our shared conviction that a more just and secure future is achievable through strengthened international cooperation. By showcasing the ingenuity and innovation at the heart of successful multilateral institutions and partnerships, we will be better positioned to design new institutions capable of addressing complex transboundary challenges and advancing meaningful human progress.”
The partnership will anchor a community of like-minded researchers dedicated to developing more effective cooperation models to address global challenges.
Governance practices and models will be consolidated on a dynamic interactive digital platform featuring data visualizations, case studies and historical analysis. The initiative will also deliver capacity-building activities, knowledge-exchange opportunities (including seminars, workshops and conferences), collaboration on academic programmes and research co-supervision.
Maria Ivanova, Director of the Policy School and Professor of Public Policy at Northeastern, observed: “This partnership affirms the Policy School’s role as a global contributor to reimagining multilateral governance. In collaboration with UNU-CPR, we will bring engaged scholarship into direct dialogue with international policymaking. Our students are integral to this work, advancing the future of global cooperation through the principles we champion: communication, collaboration and community.”
Moira Zellner, Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Director of Participatory Modeling and Data Science at Northeastern, discussed how the partnership will enable sectors and countries to address global governance challenges through participatory modeling: "From the innovation in governance structures; to the improved management of plastic production, recycling, and disposal; to transboundary water management, participatory modeling can help us put together a bigger picture of our collective issues and simulate the impacts and trade-offs of solutions to help us make new and better decisions."
Collaborator Carmen Hull, Professor in Information Design and Data Visualization, and head of XYZ Datalabs at Northeastern, speaking about the critical role data visualization will play in the initiative, commented: “Emerging data visualization techniques can help transform complex global governance platform models into more intuitive, accessible representations – mapping intricate relationships and interdependencies within policy agreements.”
She added: “Our work with qualitative data transforms complex narratives and textual information into intuitive visual representations that reveal patterns, connections and insights more efficiently than traditional text-based analysis, helping researchers and audiences quickly understand nuanced information and making abstract structural and functional characteristics more comprehensible to diverse audiences.”
Speaking at the signing of the MoU, UNU Rector and UN Under-Secretary-General, Tshilidzi Marwala, celebrated the new partnership: “Today’s ceremony marks the start of an exciting new collaboration with Northeastern University that will deliver practical, relevant and innovative policy solutions for a stronger, more resilient multilateral system extending UNU-CPR’s support for the commitments made at the 2024 Summit of the Future. By working together and jointly applying our expertise we will help the United Nations, Member States and others navigate today’s increasingly complex and interdependent challenges.”
The Global Governance Innovation Platform was initiated as a response to the UN Secretary-General’s call for new ideas that can help Member States and other stakeholders develop effective multilateral solutions. A major obstacle to this transformation agenda has been the absence of any systematic processes to gather, centralize, study or share governance innovations.
