GTD research projects

The 3WE project has received a 500,000 euros grant from the Joint SDG research program of the Netherlands Scientific Organization (NWO), to conduct a four year study on how foreign direct investment (FDI) generated employment is affecting the well-being of workers, and women in particular, in Africa where FDI is becoming one of the main sources of new employment opportunities and economic growth on the continent.

The project will study this question through the case of Ethiopia, one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, with unprecedented rates of female wage labour. It asks whether the rapid influx of foreign direct investment (FDI) from different types of investors into various sectors of the Ethiopian economy is creating decent work (SDG8) and how it impacts the well-being (SDG3) of the women employed in these industries.

 Read the 3WE project report which collects insights from research findings and stakeholder consultations to suggest how the country's horticulture and apparel firms can improve worker wellbeing.

GTD project team:

• Prof. Valentina Mazzucato
• Dr. Bilisuma Dito
• Dr. Elsje Fourie
• Dr. Konjit Gudeta

Project partners:

• Ethiopian Economic Policy Research Institute (EEPRI) of the Ethiopian Economic Association (EEA)
• Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos)
• European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM)

Legitimacy, Financialization, and Varieties of Capitalism: Understanding Sovereign Wealth Funds in Europe (SWFsEUROPE) is an ERC-funded project (€1,414,722) led by Dr. Adam Dixon. SWFsEUROPE researches the evolving and variegated pattern of ‘sovereign fund capitalism’ in Europe, developing a new theory of the relationship between states and global finance. Dr. Ilias Alami and Dr. Milan Babic are the postdoctoral researchers in this project.

The number and size of SWFs has grown substantially in the last decade, leading to an unsettled debate regarding their legitimacy in the global political economy, particularly as many originate from the Global South and from illiberal political economies (e.g. China). By analysing the behavior of SWFs, their interaction with different stakeholders at home and abroad, and how they are legitimised as financial actors in the global political economy, this study will provide new critical insights into the contemporary relationship between the state and the market.

MO-TRAYL aims to develop a better understanding of the relationship between migration and young people’s life-chances by studying youth’s mobility trajectories. The project is led by Prof. Valentina Mazzucato and has received funding from the ERC.

MO-TRAYL will break new ground by studying simultaneously youths in the Global South who have remained ‘at home’ and those who have migrated to Europe by making use of unique new longitudinal data collected in the Global South as well as collecting new data in the Global North that specifically traces the mobility trajectories, the resulting different family compositions along the way, and how both affect life chances.

Migrant Life Course and Legal Status Transition (MiLifeStatus) is a five-year research project led by Prof. Maarten Vink. It studies the relation between migrant naturalisation and integration. MiLifeStatus has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 682626).

LIMES, the Latin word for border, is a doctoral programme for 13 talented PhD candidates in the domain of the humanities and social sciences, centred on the theme of ‘The Hardening and Softening of Borders: Europe in a Globalising World’. It has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie (grant agreement No 847596).

LIMES is led by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS), thereby working closely with University College Maastricht (UCM), the School of Business and Economics (SBE), and the Faculty of Law (FL). 6 out of 13 PhD candidates are employed by FASoS and 2 PhD candidates are part of GTD.

Karlien Strijbosch received a grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for her PhD research project 'Challenging Masculinities? The institution of marriage for young Senegalese migrant men under conditions of involuntary return to Senegal'. Her supervisor is Prof. Valentina Mazzucato. 

CHERN – the China in Europe Research Network – is a platform for knowledge exchange about China’s increasing presence in Europe among academic and non-academic communities.

Funded by the Cooperation in Science and Technology programme (COST) of the European Union (starting from November 2019 until November 2023), CHERN’s remit is trans-European, encompassing countries irrespective of their EU membership.

GTD is represented at CHERN by Dr. Adam Dixon, who is one of the two management committee members for the Netherlands.