News

State-owned sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), like that of FIFA World Cup host nation Qatar, are major shareholders in Western industrial and cultural assets. Is that a cause for concern? FASoS’ Adam Dixon has some answers.

When we asked alumnus Robbie Servais about his current occupation, he told us that he works as a football coach at K.R.C. Genk. An unusual career considering that he studied International Business at Maastricht University. Although Robbie's profession may seem like an unusual career choice, his studies at the School of Business and Economics did have a great influence on his professional career. 

From polarisation, misinformation and populists at home to geopolitical pressure from abroad: European democracy is feeling the strain. In an effort to uphold and expand one of its core values, the EU is financing a research project on the promotion of democracy. Professor Giselle Bosse, an Eastern Europe expert at FASoS, leads the work package ‘Democratisation and economic modernisation in authoritarian and hybrid regimes.’

They can do it already: deliver pizzas and medicines, inspect windows for cleanliness, monitor crowds. And all that autonomously, without a human driver. But how do you ensure that drones comply with laws and regulations? Professor of Private Law and technology expert Gijs van Dijck translates legal rules such that drones can understand and implement them.

The new dean of SBE, Marielle Heijltjes, is a product of Maastricht University. In 1985 she was among only the second cohort of business-economics students. “When I take office as SBE dean, I’ll be the first alum and the first woman in that role. I’ve always thought fondly of the school."

After years of meaningful work at our university, Prof. Fons Coomans gave his farewell address to the Faculty of Law on 2 September, where he examined important human rights questions. How do they impact our daily lives? And how do they affect people on a personal level? Will future generations still have human rights?

Hannah Brodersen, currently working as a postdoc at the Université de Neuchâtel (Switzerland), was awarded the Prize for her Doctoral thesis ‘Longer than life: How the ICTY strengthened the rule of law in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia’.

For three years in a row, Steffen Künn and colleagues went to a seven-week-long chess tournament in Cologne to establish a link between levels of air pollution and cognitive performance. The somewhat alarming results were eagerly scooped up by the media, but it took even more data to convince the academic community that air pollution might affect our economy.

A Global History of Hungary, 1869-2022 is a comprehensive book that presents the country as an open society interacting with other nations, mainly within Europe.

It could come straight out of Stanley Kubrick’s dystopian movie A Clockwork Orange: using direct brain stimulation to reduce aggressive behaviour. For PhD student Ruben Knehans, it’s his daily business. Aside from the medical complexity, it raises all sorts of questions. Is it ethical, for example, to modify someone's behaviour? Can you justify imposing brain stimulation on convicts under criminal law? How to set rules and standards? Ruben tries to answer these questions in his PhD research at UM’s Faculty of Law.