Marie Skłodowska-Curie grants for Hanna Fromell and Nickolas Gagnon

"I am just happy to receive this grant. It feels really good! I have been on other applications before, but it feels great to be PI for the first time. That I am a junior researcher and get the big responsibility, it is very exciting,” says Assistant Professor Hanna Fromell, who has received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant for her project Intra House Decisions.

Assistant Professor Nickolas Gagnon also received the grant of approximately EUR 215,000 for his project ECO DISC.

Hanna Fromell will develop a theoretical framework and use a lab-in-the-field experiment with spouses in Ghana to map social norms regarding intra-household responsibilities and evaluate their role on spouses’ expenditures and inter-temporal decisions. By demonstrating causes of inefficiencies in resource allocation and low savings, her findings may help to inform on how women’s role can be strengthened and on the potential for harnessing men’s role in improving the household welfare.

Nickolas Gagnon’s project is to develop a novel method using incentivised experiments to evaluate discriminatory behaviour and underlying moral ideals and social norms for different types of ethnic and gender discrimination. Then, his goal is to empirically estimate the distribution of such discrimination behaviour, ideals and norms. He will conduct the project at AU with a secondment at NHH Norwegian School of Economics.

“I am very happy with the grant. It is the second that I have obtained and the biggest so far. It will allow me to focus more on research and lay the basis for the next funding step in 2-3 years, which will be an ERC Starting Grant application,” says Nickolas Gagnon.

Further readings
An important step on the way to obtaining the Skłodowska-Curie grant is AU's offer to participate in a masterclass. Nickolas Gagnon and Hanna Fromell share their experiences on participating in the masterclass in the story "How to succeed at Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship".