Two Researchers Receive Starting Grants from the European Research Council

Receiving funding from the European Research Council is an indisputable mark of excellence for a researcher, so competitive is the selection process.  

Two young researchers from Sciences Po - Philipp Brandt and Zachary Van Winkle - have just received this international recognition by winning two Starting Grants, funding awarded to researchers at the start of their careers who have already produced excellent work and have the potential to distinguish themselves in the research world.

Philipp Brandt conducts research on non-standard work trajectories

Philipp Brandt, researcher at the Centre for the Sociology of Organisations (CSO), will undertake a research project on “Returns to Work in Occupational, Relational, and Corporate Settings”. Philipp Brandt focuses on the surprising, unexpected and unusual changes in the trajectories of male and female workers. What are the consequences of switching to a completely different profession, or applying a new method to one's workstation? Is there an increase in pay, or a change in position? What are the differences between the situations of men and women? This research uses innovative data sets and computer techniques. The first part attempts to capture different institutional contexts, focusing on job change sequences at national level for France, Germany and the USA. The second part looks at how workers in two types of occupation, one more intellectual and the other more applied, carry out their work while changing professional and organisational frameworks, and the effects this has. Finally, a last study, a combination of the first two parts, focuses on workers and how they interrogate conventional job presentations depending on whether they are in standard or non-standard work trajectories.

Philipp Brandt completed his PhD at Columbia University and worked at the University of Mannheim as a post-doctoral researcher, where he received the 2019 Teaching Award from students in sociology and political science. He is completing a book project on the emergence of the data scientist profession and a study of migrant workers in German companies.

Zachary Van Winkle studies the impact of widowhood worldwide

Zachary Van Winkle, a researcher at Sciences Po's Centre for Research on Social Inequalities (CRIS), will be tackling a sensitive and understudied subject “A Social Demography of Widowhood across Ageing Societies”. While the loss of a spouse is a critical emotional moment, it also has long-lasting consequences, particularly in terms of economic vulnerability.  Not only is mental health damaged - anxiety, insomnia, depression, loneliness - but income is also affected, with serious consequences, particularly in relation to housing. Two other aspects of the project make it an innovative piece of research: the comparison of widow/widower trajectories in sixty countries, and their evolution in a historical perspective.

In 2018, Zachary Van Winkle had already gained recognition for his doctoral work, receiving the prize for best thesis awarded by the European Consortium of Sociological Research and the German Society for Demography. Before joining Sciences Po, he had carried out research at Oxford University, as a post-doctoral fellow.