WiRe Meets Mipri: a Guest Interview with Magdalena Viktoria Kuyterink

by WiRe-Team / Photo: WiRe

edited by

WiRe Team

If you’ve been a visitor to our blog in the past, you might have noticed references here and there to mipri, the Münster International Peace Research Initiative, a programme started by the University of Münster in 2021 in collaboration with the city of Münster to foster future-oriented ideas and support international scholars who are working in peace and conflict research. Mipri looks to continue Münster’s legacy as a space for sustainable peace-building, given that the city served as a the location for the signing of the Peace of Westphalia on October 24, 1648. The Peace of Westphalia ended a terrible decades-long religious war in Europe. In light of today’s situation in Europe, supporting the search for diplomatic conflict-solving solutions feels more important than ever.

To commemorate the 374th signing of this historic treaty, we invited the current mipri fellows to tell us more about their projects on peace and conflict related research.

Enjoy the interview with Magdalena Viktoria Kuyterink

Magdalena Viktoria Kuyterink is an Austrian and Dutch Phd student in Economics at the European University Institute in Florence. She holds an undergraduate degree from Tilburg University in the Netherlands.  Her research interests are questions related to the political economy, industrial organization, micro theory and institutions and organizations, applied to a broad set of disciplines, including law, management, political science, education and health. 

Within her Phd studies she is part of the Münster Peace Prize and researches about coalition formation and optimal sanction size in international disputes with a reference to the ongoing international crises in the Ukrainian. The project will be guided by Professor Dr. Thomas Apolte and Dr. Lena Gerling, and aims to answer whether the abolishment of unanimity voting could lead to socially more efficient outcomes.

I am an economist by training and I work on applied micro theory. I design theoretical, mathematical models to capture the trade offs of different stakeholders – a stakeholder is decision maker (DM), where the choice of one DM affects the payoffs/utilities and also choices of the other.

Applied Game Theory or „Relevance, Urgence and Necessity”

It can help guide the policy debate on conflict prevention or resolution. It also hopefully inspires other researchers to engage in the field of peace and conflict studies. I hope that new approaches to optimal sanction design and implementation can evolve and foster a more stable and resilient social system.

It can help guide the policy debate on conflict prevention or resolution. It also hopefully inspires other researchers to engage in the field of peace and conflict studies. I hope that new approaches to optimal sanction design and implementation can evolve and foster a more stable and resilient social system.

Jean Tirole: can we spend an afternoon brainstorming and co-author a paper?

I think I would like to work with social media data, which is very hard to get. With enough money one could set up computer codes that automatically scraps the data and makes it machine-readable. With the data I could then carefully test my theoretical models empirically.

I like history, art and philosophy a lot, but merely to de-stress and let my thoughts flow (also for inspirational reasons I guess). I would choose economics all over again.

My family and friends make me very happy. I am very grateful for my peaceful and protected childhood, the luck I have of being healthy and save and being able to do my research in a beautiful place. Research brings me a lot of happiness, indeed – meeting inspiring new people and while I feel like I can provide my research as a public good, I get so much in return.