Three researchers join talent programme
Three researchers have just been appointed to the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences’ Talent Track, which supports young researchers in making key contributions to their field of research.
Recently, three researchers at the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences at SDU received the welcome news that they had been selected for the faculty’s talent programme ‘SAMF Talent Track’.
The Talent Track supports a number of young researchers at the faculty who have demonstrated extraordinary potential in pursuing visionary goals that have the potential to significantly strengthen their research careers as well as the faculty’s research.
The three researchers set to join the SAMF Talent Track and thus get an even better opportunity to work with their research ideas are Catalin-Gabriel Stanescu, Seetha Menon and Thorbjørn Sejr Guul.
Get an insight into the researchers’ ideas and ambitions below.
Better legislation in the field of debt collection
Catalin-Gabriel Stanescu is interested in the financial protection of consumers and more specifically how we achieve better regulation in the field of debt collection to prevent abusive debt collection practices.
He became aware of the problem while working as a lawyer in his native country Romania. Here he learned how a number of consumers were exposed to unfair practices by creditors and debt collectors in the wake of the financial crisis. Empirical data has since shown that only 9 out of 27 EU Member States have adopted sector-specific legislation on abusive debt collection practices.
Catalin-Gabriel Stanescu has therefore undertaken to propose a practical solution to this, and he is currently working on completing a book advancing a principled approach to regulating the field of debt collection. The goal of his research is both to protect consumers through adequate protection rules while ensuring a high degree of harmonisation across the EU.
Catalin-Gabriel Stanescu is an Associate Professor at the Department of Law and has, among other things, done a Marie Curie-funded project as part of his research.
Read more about Catalin-Gabriel’s research and visions here.
Differences in health between women and men
The focal point of Seetha Menon’s research is health economics, and she is particularly concerned with finding solutions that can reduce social inequality in health. Among other things, her research aims to make us more aware of the question of gender differences in health behaviour and healthcare utilisation.
On average, Danish women outlive men by almost half a decade. But despite the fact that women live longer, women – at older ages – tend to be in worse health than men – a phenomenon known as ‘the male-female health-survival paradox’. Despite decades of research, it has not yet been possible to explain the social factors behind this paradox.
Seetha Menon hopes she can help change that by examining differences in healthcare utilisation and health behaviour among men and women. Seetha Menon is an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, and earlier this year, the Independent Research Fund Denmark awarded her a grant of DKK 2.4 million for the above research project.
Read more about Seetha’s research and visions here.
Social equity in public welfare
The way we organise public administration and services is decisive for who gets what, when and how when the benefits of society are distributed. Thorbjørn Sejr Guul has always been interested in what increases and decreases the differences in outcomes across different social groups in relation to public policies.
In his research, Thorbjørn Sejr Guul focuses on how to design the delivery of public services in a way that ensures that all citizens are treated fairly and equally. This applies both to the issue of unjustified differential treatment of citizens in relation to ethnicity, gender and class, and to how the way the design and delivery of public services affect the extent of differential treatment. It also applies to how public services can compensate citizens who are worse off in ways that create better, more equal outcomes for these groups of citizens.
Ultimately, Thorbjørn Sejr Guul hopes that his research insights will help inform future policymaking.
Thorbjørn Sejr Guul is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Management. He and two colleagues have received DKK 1.8 million from the Spar Nord Foundation for a project on young people’s access to upper-secondary education.
Read more about Thorbjørn’s research and visions here.
What is the Talent Track all about?
With the admission to the talent programme, an individual career plan will be arranged for Catalin-Gabriel Stanescu, Seetha Menon and Thorbjørn Sejr Guul.They will also receive funding for courses, data, buyouts, travelling and other initiatives that can benefit their research.
In addition, it is also a forum where researchers can network and discuss questions and experiences with each other.
A total of 17 researchers are now part of the SAMF Talent Track.
Talent Track
The Talent Track is an initiative at the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences at SDU which supports young researchers with extraordinary potential. Individual career-boosting activities are organised for each participant. The initiative is also a forum for networking and knowledge sharing among the faculty’s emerging research talents.