Research Week 2026: Building a Research Community Across UNU-MERIT

Research Week is one of the moments in the UNU-MERIT calendar when the breadth of the Institute’s research becomes visible in one place.

Bringing together full-time and dual-career PhD fellows from different cohorts and tracks, supervisors, researchers and colleagues from across the Institute, this year’s edition created space not only to present work in progress, but also to exchange ideas across disciplines, receive feedback and strengthen connections within the wider research community.

For Micheline Goedhuys, Director of the UNU-MERIT PhD Programme, this was one of the defining features of the week. “What stood out to me most was not only the quality of the research being undertaken, but also the sense of an increasingly connected research community.”

With fellows at very different stages of their doctoral journeys presenting alongside one another, Research Week provides a valuable opportunity to view the PhD programme as a whole: a community spanning different generations of researchers and addressing a wide range of questions around innovation, development and societal change.

Micheline was particularly encouraged by the contribution of the newest cohort. “The new cohort made a very strong impression,” she reflected. “They brought curiosity and a willingness to explore questions beyond their initial research ideas.” At the same time, she highlighted the role that more advanced fellows play in sharing experiences through mentoring, joint courses and informal exchange, creating forms of peer learning that complement the programme’s formal supervision and training.

Designing space for exchange

That sense of community was not simply a by-product of the week. It was also an explicit consideration in how the programme was designed.

For Matilde João Mota, PhD Fellow at UNU-MERIT and one of the organisers, the aim was to ensure that Research Week went beyond a sequence of presentations and training sessions. As she explained, “While it was important to ensure that the training needs of fellows were met, we wanted the programme to be more than a sequence of presentations. Alongside academic and skills training and feedback, we hoped to create opportunities to exchange research ideas, learn about and from each other’s work and experiences, and strengthen our sense of community.”

This also meant making room for interaction beyond the formal academic programme. The week included a screening of Harris Dickinson’s Urchin, a film touching on themes including social exclusion that resonate with areas of research across the Institute, as well as other opportunities for fellows and colleagues to spend time together informally.

For Matilde, these activities are not separate from the academic experience. Rather, they reinforce it. “A strong doctoral community is built not only through academic exchange but also through opportunities to connect beyond our research.”

A space to test ideas

For PhD fellows themselves, one of the particular strengths of Research Week is the opportunity to present research while it is still developing.

María Nathalia Ramírez Chaparro, PhD Fellow at UNU-MERIT, sees the internal setting as especially valuable. “It is really nice to be able to present your research in a safe environment, where everyone is genuinely interested in listening to you and where comments come from a place of care and respect rather than just criticism.”

Knowing that Research Week returns each year also creates a useful rhythm for doctoral research. Fellows know that there will be a point in the calendar when they will have something to present, whether that is an initial research pitch or a more developed paper. That expectation can help move ideas forward, sharpen arguments and prepare work for discussion with a wider audience.

The week also creates opportunities to hear from colleagues whose research may otherwise be less visible in everyday life at the Institute. Nathalia particularly highlighted the participation of UNU-MERIT’s dual-career PhD fellows. Because they are not continuously based at the Institute and often bring different professional experiences and approaches to their research, Research Week offers an opportunity to learn about work that colleagues might otherwise encounter less frequently.

As Nathalia put it, “We do not necessarily know much about how our peers are working or what they are currently doing with their research. Research Week creates that space to actually hear about each other’s work, exchange ideas and see what people from different cohorts and disciplines are working on.”

That matters because the ordinary rhythm of doctoral research can easily become concentrated around an individual project and supervisory team.

Looking beyond individual papers

The intellectual exchange extended beyond the presentations by UNU-MERIT researchers themselves.

Two keynote lectures formed part of this year’s programme, delivered by Dr Amir Lebdioui of the University of Oxford and Professor Rachel Ngai of the London School of Economics.

For Chiara A. Di Tommaso, the keynote sessions were among the intellectual highlights of the week. “Both speakers delivered very interesting presentations that were broad in scope while still engaging deeply with important research questions that are relevant to many of us.”

What she particularly valued was their transversal approach. Rather than concentrating narrowly on a single paper, both speakers encouraged participants to consider broader research questions, connections and implications, and to relate them to the diversity of research being undertaken across UNU-MERIT.

That kind of exchange is particularly valuable in an Institute where researchers work across fields ranging from innovation and economic development to migration, social protection, governance, sustainability and technological change.

More than individual research projects

Taken together, the different elements of Research Week serve several purposes. The week creates a milestone against which ideas can develop, provides a supportive environment for testing arguments, exposes fellows to research beyond their immediate areas of expertise, and creates opportunities for researchers at different stages of their careers to learn from one another.

For Micheline, this wider community-building function is fundamental to doctoral education. “Academic development is not only about producing excellent individual research; it is also about learning how to ask better questions, give and receive constructive feedback, communicate across disciplines, and situate one’s own work within a broader intellectual conversation.”

The involvement of colleagues from across UNU-MERIT strengthens that process further by connecting PhD fellows with researchers beyond their immediate supervisory teams.

The result is something larger than an annual series of presentations. As Micheline concludes, “In Research Week we are building more than a collection of individual PhD projects. We are building a research community in which fellows can learn from one another, contribute to the intellectual life of UNU-MERIT, and develop a shared sense of belonging to the Institute.”

That combination of intellectual exchange, constructive feedback and opportunities to connect as colleagues is ultimately what makes Research Week an important part of the PhD experience at UNU-MERIT.