News

Two Nuffield Fellows, Barbara Petrongolo and Martin Weidner, have been awarded European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grants, which are amongst the most prestigious and competitive research awards in Europe. The grants, each worth up to €2.5 million over five years, will support ambitious new projects addressing major questions in labour economics and econometrics.

Barbara and Martin were among fourteen academics at the University of Oxford, who were awarded by the ERC with Advanced Grants.

Barbara Petrongolo, Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics and a Professorial Fellow of Nuffield College, has received funding for GENTALENT, a project that will investigate how childbirth, workplace organisation and social norms shape the division of paid and unpaid work within families. The research will examine how these factors influence careers, parental wellbeing and child development, creating a new platform for analysing the future of work and family life.

Barbara Petrongolo said:

“I am truly honoured to receive an ERC Advanced Grant. This award provides a unique opportunity to pursue an ambitious research agenda on pressing challenges facing modern societies. I’m looking forward to starting new collaborations with my co-authors and form new research partnerships with postdocs and DPhil students.”

Martin Weidner, Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics and a Professorial Fellow of Nuffield College, has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for HOTMAP, a project that will develop new statistical methods to help economists draw more reliable conclusions from complex data. The research aims to make economic estimates based on machine learning more robust and less vulnerable to bias, improving analysis in areas such as policy evaluation, natural experiments and studies of economic change over time.

Martin Weidner said:

“I am delighted and honoured to receive this ERC Advanced Grant. It will allow me to work on an ambitious research agenda over five years, and to bring the wider econometrics community together through workshops and conferences as we develop methods that I hope will be genuinely useful to applied researchers across economics.”

The awards highlight the strength of economics research at Nuffield College and the University of Oxford, which support innovative projects that address some of the most important methodological and social challenges facing contemporary societies.

Warm congratulations to Barbara and Martin on this outstanding achievement.