SAMF receives four Marie Curie grants

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships are among the most prestigious grants in the EU, supporting some of the most promising young researchers in their career development as well as boosting the research environment of which they are part.

The researchers who receive a Marie Curie grant are given the opportunity to move to a research environment that can benefit their research and career – and this is the reason why the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences has obtained as many as four Marie Curie grants for a total of six million Danish kroner when this year’s grants were awarded.

Two of the recipients are already employed at the faculty, while the other two have also chosen to conduct their research at SDU.

- The four Marie Curie Fellowships are the highest number we have been granted at SAMF, so it’s a really great result for us. I look forward to following the four talented researchers in their work of creating groundbreaking knowledge in each of their research fields, says Sten Rynning, who is Vice Dean for Research at the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences.

He adds that another applicant is on the waiting list and therefore also may get through the eye of the needle.

Here are the four research talents

The four researchers who have received one of the prestigious Marie Curie Fellowships are Angela Chang, Claire Yorke, Elena Korchmina and Volha Lazuka, and their projects will be described briefly below.

Angela Chang is already employed at SDU as an Assistant Professor, and she will be responsible for the project ‘Measuring Experienced Disease Burden (ExpBoD)’ which is carried out at the Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics (CPop) at SDU.

Angela Chang’s project aims at developing a way of measuring the impact of diseases on a number of other aspects – from economic to psychological consequences. The aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the burden that accompanies diseases, thereby creating a better basis for making political priorities.

Angela Chang has been employed as an Assistant Professor at SDU since last year when she became part of the elite research centre D-IAS, and with the Marie Curie grant, she is now also associated with the academic elite environment CPop.

Claire Yorke will travel to Denmark to become part of the Center for War Studies, where she will work on the project ‘Empathy and International Security (EIS)’.

She will combine knowledge of international relations, history and political psychology and investigate how a more nuanced understanding of empathy can contribute to a more humane approach to security.

Claire Yorke is currently a guest researcher at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. And at SDU, she will be affiliated with the research group International Politics and the interdisciplinary research centre Center for War Studies, which is part of the Department of Political Science and Public Management.

Elena Korchmina will come to SDU and more specifically the Department of Business and Economics, where she will embark on the project ‘Denmark and Russia: Why two Arctic empires developed so differently and continue to diverge?’

Elena Korchmina will examine Danish-Russian relations in the 18th and 19th centuries. At first, the two countries were very close in terms of both economic and institutional development, but after the abolition of serfdom in Denmark, their paths started to diverge – and Elena Korchmina wants to look deeper into this.

She comes from a position as an Assistant Professor at the History Department at the Higher School of Economics in Russia, and at SDU she will become part of the research group Econometrics & Economic History.

Volha Lazuka is employed at SDU as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Business and Economics, where she will be responsible for the project ‘The Dynamic Impacts of Child Health and Skills Enhanced by School Interventions across the Life Course (DYNAMICS)’.

Volha Lazuka will study the impact of successful school reforms on children’s health and skills, including the later-life outcomes.

In addition to the research group Historical Economics and Development Group (HEDG), Volha Lazuka is also affiliated with the interdisciplinary research centre CPop.

Will join the faculty’s talent development programme

The four researchers will also be part of a new talent development programme at the faculty. It aims to further strengthen their career development, and one of the researchers, Volha Lazuka, has already been selected for the programme called Talent Track.

You can read more about the initiative in this article: Talent Track to promote elite research