Mattias Larsen

Peace and Development Research
PhD, Researcher

About

• PhD
• Peace and development research
• Researcher
   

Also active as project manager and coordinator of the Austrian participation in the EU-Africa collaborative project ERAfrica (ERA-Net – www.erafrica.eu) at the Commission for Development Studies at the OeAD – GmbH.

Areas of interest

Rural development, Social dimensions of the economy, Relationships between agency and socio-economic structures, Institutional change and rigidities, Inequality, Comparative methodology, Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), Social Theory, Institutionalism, The problem of daughter discrimination in India, Changes in the institution of the family.

Current research

My current work deals with the problem of discrimination against daughters in India as evidenced in the decreasing numbers of girls to boys in the population.

The starting point is the seemingly paradoxical fact that this process has taken place at a time when India has experienced substantial economic and social development. The project has a general focus on gender discrimination and development and a specific focus on the problem of “missing girls”. It is based on primary data collected in North-Western India; the area most strongly affected, and is a collaborative effort with Indian colleagues using a mixed-method approach both in terms of data collection – in the form of survey and ethnographic work – and in terms of analysis using both statistical and qualitative methods.

Teaching and tutoring

No teaching at present