Young researchers in social science win places at the South West Crucible 2013
21 January 2013
Dr Matt Dickson, Dr Thanos Maroukis (Department of Social & Policy Sciences), Dr Sunčica Vujić (Department of Economics) and Dr Matthew Alford (Department of Politics, Languages & International Studies) have been awarded places at the first ever Crucible programme to be held in the South West during the spring of 2013. Crucible is an inspiring programme of personal, professional and leadership development for promising future research leaders who are building their careers in the South West.
The scheme invited applications from talented early-to-mid career researchers across all disciplines at the Universities of Bath, Bristol and the West of England. After a highly competitive selection process, 30 participants who have already demonstrated a high level of achievement in their field, come together to explore and expand their creative capacity and problem-solving potential in ways they may never have considered before. The scheme is designed to introduce researchers to new ways of thinking and working, to help create new and innovative collaborations with researchers in other disciplines and lead to a greater understanding of how research can impact society.
Matt Dickson joined the University in October 2012 as a Prize Fellow in the Department of Social & Policy Sciences, and has been researching issues around social mobility. He gained his PhD in Economics from the University of Warwick in 2009 and since then has held postdoc positions at the University of Bristol and University College Dublin.
In his research Matt uses applied micro-econometric techniques and his current projects address the complex interactions between education, time- and risk-preferences, psychological traits and the transmission of these factors between parents and their children.
Sunčica joined the University in July 2011 as a lecturer in the Department of Economics. She has previously held positions at both the Department of Management and the Centre for Economic Performance at London School of Economics, and at the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB).
Sunčica has also been a lecturer at the VU University in Amsterdam, which is where she gained her PhD in Economics in 2009. Her research uses applied micro-econometric techniques in the field of labour economics, with focus on crime, education, health, gender, poverty and inequality. Recent research interests include economic and pro-social behaviour within organisations (social businesses) and returns to entrepreneurship. Additionally, she focuses on transition and emerging market economies, particularly Western Balkans.
Thanos Maroukis joined the Department of Social & Policy Sciences in October 2012 as a Marie Curie Fellow working on migration and temporary agency work in the EU. He gained his PhD in Sociology in 2007 at the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece. He held positions as a Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) in Athens between 2007 and 2012 and at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute, in Florence, Italy in 2010-2011.
His principal areas of research are migration studies and the sociology of labour markets, with a more particular focus on undocumented migration, circular migration, migration policy and human smuggling, and the social regulation of labour markets, and the informal economy. His current project explores the social processes and structures framing both the mobility of the migrant worker and the organization of work leading to different experiences of the agency work relationship. He does so in a comparative setting across different labour markets (welfare, tourist and agricultural sector) and across two EU countries, UK and Greece, characterised by very different political economies, experiencing different and managing differently migration flows.
The South West Crucible 2013 takes place over three intensive two-day residential workshops to be held in February, March and April.
