Volha Lazuka receives prestigious grant
Associate Professor Volha Lazuka is among this year’s recipients of the Independent Research Fund Denmark’s Sapere Aude grant, awarded to top researchers within their field. She will examine the effect of initiatives and reforms that have been implemented for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to become equal members of society.
Independent Research Fund Denmark has just awarded the prestigious Sapere Aude grants to 38 very talented researchers who will lead their own research project and group at a high international level.
One of the researchers who will now pursue new research ideas as a Sapere Aude research leader is Associate Professor Volha Lazuka from the Department of Economics at the University of Southern Denmark.
With a grant of just over DKK 6 million, she will lead the project Long-term social change through normalization reforms targeting people with disabilities and their peers.
The project in brief
In her project, Volha Lazuka will examine the impact of public policies and reforms on people with intellectual and developmental disabilities – a group that generally has poorer economic well-being, just as their relatives' working lives are negatively affected.
- I will apply econometric methods to register microdata from Denmark and Sweden, where institutions for people with disabilities were dismantled in the 1980s to 2000s and replaced with public housing in local communities to strengthen their social inclusion in society. The aim is to advance mainstream economics to recognize the importance of social inclusion for economic well-being and inequality, says Volha Lazuka.
Did reforms reduce economic inequality?
According to Volha Lazuka the long-term perspectives of her project are both to contribute to research on social inclusion and discrimination by a disability dimension in economics research and to provide new methods to economics and other disciplines.
- The reforms aimed to improve the well-being of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and foster living in close proximity with local residents, but the effects are not well known. I assume that the reforms have significantly shaped society today, she says and continues:
- My research will also show to what extent these reforms were sufficient to reduce economic inequality by a disability dimension and how much needs to be done policy wise in a welfare society like the Danish one.
Read about all SDU researchers who are awarded a Sapere Aude grant here.
Meet the researcher
Volha Lazuka is an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics at SDU, where she conducts research in the intersection of economic history and labor economics. She is also affiliated with the university’s research centre the Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics (CPop) and the Historical Economics and Development Group (HEDG).
More about Sapere Aude
- Sapere Aude means 'Dare to know'.
- The Sapere Aude: DFF-Starting Grant is awarded to talented, young researchers to lead a research project at a high international level.
- The grant gives researchers the opportunity to develop and go in depth with their own research ideas as well as build their own research group.
- The aim of Sapere Aude is also to promote mobility between research environments, nationally and internationally.