Milena Nikolova appointed as Aletta Jacobs Professor in the Economics of Well-being

The Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) is proud to announce that Milena Nikolova has been appointed as Aletta Jacobs Professor in the Economics of Well-being. The chair will be positioned within the Department of Global Economics and Management (GEM).

Milena Nikolova joined FEB as an assistant professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow in 2018 and became an associate professor in 2020. Before joining FEB, Nikolova was a Research Associate at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. She obtained her PhD in Public Policy at the University of Maryland (US) in 2014 and held several positions as a researcher, scholar and policy analyst at various institutes in the US.

Happiness & broad well-being

Nikolova is an excellent researcher with a clear profile and a strong international network. Her research focuses on the economics of happiness, broad well-being, the economics of transition and entrepreneurship. Her work on these topics fits well within the strategic interdisciplinary themes of Healthy Society and Future Prosperity & Sustainability, two of the five themes that FEB will further develop and embed in education and research in the coming years. In addition to carrying out her own research and teaching activities, Nikolova is Editor of an internationally renowned journal: the Journal of Population Economics. Her own research was published in several leading journals, such as the Journal of Public Economics, Labour Economics and the Journal of Business Venturing.

As Aletta Jacobs Professor in the Economics of Well-being, Nikolova will take a leading role in strengthening the research program of the GEM department and FEB as a whole. Over the past few decades, teaching and research within the GEM department related to growth and development in an international setting have focused on traditional definitions and measures of progress (e.g., those related to GDP). As Professor in the Economics of Well-being, Nikolova will complement these extant research and teaching lines by contributing insights on how societal transformations impact mental health, subjective well-being, and other well-being outcomes. Nikolova: “I am deeply honored to be appointed as the Aletta Jacobs Chair. This appointment provides me with an incredible opportunity to advance the burgeoning field of the economics of well-being and contribute to and extend existing lines of research and teaching at FEB. I look forward to working with my colleagues and students to further advance the interdisciplinary themes of Healthy Society and Future Prosperity & Sustainability.”

Aletta Jacobs Chairs

In 2020 the University of Groningen created an incentive fund to set up fifteen new chairs, which were assigned exclusively to female academics. The chairs are named after the figurehead of the UG: Aletta Jacobs. The fifteen Aletta Jacobs chairs are divided between all eleven faculties. The incentive fund enables the faculties to convert existing Associate Professor posts into Full Professor posts.