Dr. Ieda Matavelli, Assistant Professor of Economics at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia), will visit the Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute as part of the University of Cologne’s IMPACT Fellowship from October to November 2026. As part of the project “UoC IMPACT – IMPlementing Gender AspeCTs in Research,” funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, the fellowship is being conducted in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Matthias Heinz and Dr. Barbara Boelmann, both members of the Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute.
Ieda Matavelli‘s research lies at the intersection of behavioral, cultural, labor, and development economics. She conducts large-scale field experiments in partnership with governments and the private sector to study topics in gender and masculinity, discrimination, and labor markets.
In the following Q&A, Ieda Matavelli shares insights into her research, her motivation, and her personal perspectives on gender research:
Men! Most of the gender research in economics focused on women, and I thought: but wait, men also have a gender. And the way boys are raised to be men also affects women.
A tablet. Whether I am surveying teenagers in schools, job seekers in Rio or people at an ayahuasca ceremony, the tablet is where their stories become data.
Being in the field! As economists we spend most of our time in front of a computer, but the field is real life. Talking to teenagers, job seekers or study participants, you learn so much. I come back with 20 new research ideas a day.
In our ayahuasca study, the effects on mental health were larger for older participants. We usually assume people change the most when they are young, so this one really surprised us.
bell hooks. Her book “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love” was eye opening and crucial to the development of my research. She argued that patriarchy hurts men too, and that we cannot talk about gender equality without talking about men.
I would follow people over their whole lives to understand how beliefs about masculinity change across the life cycle, and which life shocks shape them, like losing a parent, losing a job or becoming a father.
It started during my undergrad. I looked around and saw very few women and very few Black students, in a country where most people are Black or brown. It was clear that who gets into these spaces is not random, and that gender, race and class go together. I saw the same thing years later in my research on discrimination against job seekers from favelas.
As part of her research visit, Ieda Matavelli is offering several opportunities for academic exchange. Interested individuals are welcome to attend the following public events:
October 28 | 4:00 p.m.
Lecture as part of the lecture series for the Master’s program in Gender & Queer Studies: “On data collection on masculinity norms from 70 countries.” Please register at lkrall@uni-koeln.de.
October 30 | 10:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Workshop format: Discussion on Masculinity Studies in cooperation with the Gender Studies program at the University of Cologne. Please register at lkrall@uni-koeln.de.
November 18 | 12:00 PM–1:15 PM | Room 3.206 in the SSC Building (Universitätsstraße 22a)
ECONtribute Research Seminar: Lecture by Ieda Matavelli