Yunlong Liang
Supervisors: Dr Cara Booker, Dr Laura Fumagalli, Dr Edith Aguirre
Thesis title: Allostatic Load As A Mediator of Socioeconomic Status and Chronic Pain: A Longitudinal Analysis.
Research Interests: Social determinants of chronic pain; demographic approach; longitudinal analysis
Laura Tan
Supervisors: Dr Cara Booker, Professor Joan Busfield, Professor Paul Clarke, Professor Andrew Bateman
Thesis title: Health inequalities and area deprivation in England
Research Interests: Social Epidemiology; Sociology of Health; Quantitative Research
Precious Ogbonna
Supervisors: Dr Violetta Parutis, Dr Alita Nandi
Thesis title: Disaggregating BAME: The ‘subalternation’ of Black African international students and their experiences at UK universities. A comparative study on the experiences of Black African Home domiciled and International students
Research Interests: Black students experiences; Identity; Sub-Saharan Africa; The Global South; Post-colonial theories
Hettie Burn
Supervisors: Professor Birgitta Rabe, Dr Laura Fumagalli
Thesis title: Essays on the economics of education in the UK
Research Interests: Economics; Education
Thesis Chapter 1 focus: Using administrative education data from England to investigate bias in teacher grading. Thesis Chapter 2 focus: Using administrative education data from England to investigate the impact of nutrition on achievement. Thesis Chapter 3 focus: Using administrative data from Wales to evaluate a national policy of extended play-based learning in the early years. Additional positions: Organizing committee member for the Inaugural Essex PhD Conference in Applied Economics; ISER Student Voice Representative
Jonas Kaufmann
Supervisors: Profesesor Renee Reichl Luthra, Dr Magda Brokowska
Thesis title: Local immigrant integration
Research Interests: Migration; Political behaviour and attitudes
Jingyi Li
Supervisors: Dr Silvia Avram, Dr Karon Gush
Thesis title: Three essays on gender and economic opportunity
Research Interests: Gender inequality; Intra-household bargaining power; Motherhood wage penalty; Fertility rate
Adisetu Joy Malih
Supervisors: Professor Meena Kumar, Dr Cara Booker, Professor Paul Clarke
Thesis title: Understanding the biological pathways that mediate the associations between social position and mental health: Allostatic load
Research Interests: Biological pathways; Social position; Mental Health
Benedict Hignell
Supervisors: Dr Nicolas Geeraert, Dr Alita Nandi, Professor Meena Kumari
Thesis title: Neighbourhood Sociocultural Context and Acculturation Across the Life Course: Consequences for Physiological Dysregulation and Psychological Health
Research Interests: Biosocial research; Acculturation; Cross-cultural research
I am currently investigating how objective and subjective neighbourhood cultural and economic resources influence the physiological and psychological health of migrants. During my PhD I will use UK and US longitudinal datasets as well as primary physiological and survey measures.
Yara Issa
Supervisors: Dr Sergio Lo Iocano
Thesis title: Life Course Perspective on Childlessness
Research Interests: Fertility; Health; Well-being; Family
My thesis is concerning the topic of the life course perspective on childlessness. The goal of my research is to improve our understanding of the experience of the childless men in the UK. I am interested in studying men in this research as they are poorly addressed in the fertility and family formation studies. The study concerns pathways that led to childlessness. I ask the question of which educational, marital and employment pathways increase the likelihood of remaining childless for men at age 45. Using retrospective information, this research complements the existing work by analysing men who were childless at age 45. Another interest of my study is looking at the consequences of childlessness on the psychological well-being of men. This asks if childless men (45+) are disadvantaged compared to their counterparts’ fathers concerning their psychological and mental health. The study aims into looking at the role of personal social networks on the psychological well-being of both groups.
Linh Nguyen
Supervisors: Professor Peter Lynn, Professor Tarek Al Baghal, Professor Markus Frölich
Thesis title: Assessing and improving survey data quality in sub-Saharan Africa
Research Interests: Total survey data quality; Measurement error; Interviewer effects; Questionnaire translation; Questionnaire design
The impetus for Linh’s doctoral research lies in the distinct data collection context found in countries of the Global South, in particular sub-Saharan Africa. Her dissertation investigates how different aspects of survey design, mainly the interviewer, can influence the quality of surveys. During her Ph. D. studies, Linh received the unique opportunity to manage a panel study between 2016 and 2019 with more than 2,000 households in Zambia accompanied by a monthly telephone survey with ca. 250 respondents between 2018 and 2020. As one of the principal investigators for this study, she embedded survey experiments in the Zambian data collection to then analyse the experimental data for her Ph. D. dissertation. Her first paper studies the gender-of-interviewer effect in both factual and attitudinal questions. Her second paper estimates the magnitude of interviewer effects and links them to the use of a scripted translation versus oral, on-the-fly translation. To investigate interviewer-respondent interactions to further exlore interviewer effects, Linh secured a grant of ca. 10,000 USD from the Research Methods Initiative created by Innovations for Poverty Action and the Global Poverty Research Lab at Northwestern University. All in all, Linh’s research aims to provide evidence-based guidelines for survey design and enhance understanding in survey methodology from a multilingual perspective.
Tommaso Sartori
Supervisors: Professor Emilia Del Bono, Dr Angus Holford
Thesis title: Three Empirical Essays in Economics of Education
Research Interests: Economics of education; Labor economics; Economics of migration