This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 956909.
Insights from the ADAPTED Final Conference in November 2024
The ADAPTED Final Conference “Eradicating Poverty. Pathways towards Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals” took place in Gordon's Bay, South Africa from 25 to 28 November 2024. Early Stage Researchers showcased the remarkable advancements of the research projects and pivotal insights gained for the economics, governance and politics of development, particularly in relation to the SDGs' crucial objective of poverty alleviation.
Have a look yourself. Below you can find the posters and video recordings of all poster presentations of the ADAPTED Early Stage Researchers:
Successful Completion of Joint European Doctoral Projects
Since the end of the funding period of the ADAPTED programme in December 2024, several Early Stage Researchers have either submitted their PhD theses or have already successfully defended their PhD projects. For the year 2026, numerous PhD defences are already scheduled and regular updates will be posted in the news section.
The following Joint European Doctoral Projects are successfully completed:
- Muhammad Saleh (ESR 1), Thesis title: "Essays on Foreign Development Finance, Growth and Job Creation in the Developing World." Successfully defended at Ruhr-University Bochum on October, 23, 2025.
- Beatrice Gibertini (ESR 2), Thesis title: "Large-scale Mining and Development in Africa: Essays on Migration, Political Participation and Women's Livelihoods." Successfully defended at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam on January, 17, 2026.
ADAPTED Special Issue "The Politics of Pro-Poor Policies in the Global South"
A special thematic issue of the peer-reviewed Open Access journal "Politics and Governance" is currently under way and will feature contributions by several ADAPTED Early Stage Researchers and Research Directors. The thematic issue is titled "The Politics of Pro-Poor Policies in the Global South" and is edited by Andrew Fischer, Wil Hout and Markus Kaltenborn. Several articles are already made available and can be read prior the issue's official release.
Updates on any new publications by ADAPTED consortium members are regularly posted here.
About ADAPTED
The European Joint Doctorate ADAPTED is a consortium of European Universities, important internationally active European development organisations and think tanks and six African partner universities. The Overarching Aim of ADAPTED is to deliver high-level training with intersectoral relevance in
- validating pathways towards poverty eradication,
- analysing interactions between poverty reduction and other policy areas
- and optimising the impact of poverty reduction policies
to high achieving early stage researchers (ESRs) to bridge the existing knowledge gap in understanding poverty dynamics and by equipping the ESRs with a unique skills portfolio that is equally attractive for research institutions, development organisations and internationally active firms.
Within ADAPTED,
- the European universities – including Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany (coordinator), Erasmus University Rotterdam and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands, Boğaziçi University, Turkey, and Centre National de Recherche Scientifique in partnership with Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, France – will host the ESRs, direct their research, organise training and implement the European Joint Doctorate based on project-specific binational agreements (cotutelles de these),
- the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), the Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungs GmbH (DEG) and the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) host selected ESRs during non-academic secondments and add to the intersectoral relevance of the research done within the consortium while the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) provides ESRs with advice and training on the dissemination of research output and acts as a global dissemination platform for the ESRs,
- researchers from seven cooperating African partner universities, including the University of the Western Cape and the University of Cape Town (South Africa), Bahir Dar University (Ethiopia), Makerere University (Uganda), SD-Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies (Ghana), Moi University (Kenya), and University of Douala (Cameroon), will supervise ESRs during field work, provide them with access to local actors and to locally available data sets and link them to the non-academic sector in the fieldwork countries.
