Inequalities in Contemporary Societies

This EUTOPIA Connected Learning Community is composed of teachers and researchers from different universities in Europe who are active in areas of sociology, economics, and political science. The learning community engages in a transdisciplinary manner, sharing topical knowledge and expertise, whilst co creating cross-campus opportunities for teaching and research, such as:

• Opening up lectures on the topic of economic inequalities. Participating in joint lecture sessions provides to students the opportunity to think about new ways to approach the topic of inequality, to access new resources and to share their experiences.
• Hosting guest lectures with economists that work in international institutions engaged in the fight against inequalities (see past activities below).
• Organising cross-campus empirical projects: The student-led projects encourage students to acquire statistical and analytical techniques to evaluate (critically and empirically), the distribution of access and status within and comparatively across countries. The empirical projects provide hands-on experience in working with data from the World Inequality Database, the OECD, the IPUMS International and the Opportunity Insights. Students learn how data can be used to understand and address important social and economic problems, by introducing basic methods in data science, including regression, causal inference. Students are encouraged to be analytical and creative in their projects. The final joint discussion on project outcomes provides a unique and enriching cross-campus experience (see past activities below).

Across this range of activities, students are introduced to a variety of inequality related topics such as the analysis of inequalities in income, wealth, access to education, gender, and ethnicity., whilst tackling three core questions:

• How does inequality evolve over the path of development?
• What are the theories that can explain the level of inequalities and its dynamics?
• How do policies affect inequalities?

For more information, please see HERELink opens in a new window.