As inequality increases in most developed countries, children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families are at exceptional risk for academic underachievement with lasting consequences for individuals, their communities, and society at large. Among policy makes, early childhood education and care (ECEC) is considered a key to remedy this risk. Yet the science on ECEC effectiveness at a national scale lags behind the excitement. Exploiting unique Norwegian data, we first seek to identify how and why socioeconomic disadvantage undermines children’s language skills and school achievement. Second, we will investigate whether ECEC can improve opportunities for disadvantaged children to excel. Third, to clarify the policy relevance of these inquiries, we will estimate costs of socioeconomic achievement gaps and the economic benefits of ECEC at scale. We take an investigative approach that is unprecedented in scope—from population level trends down to nuanced assessments of individual children’s growth. Throughout the 2000s, Norway’s child poverty rates increased from about 4% to 10%, while the coverage of public ECEC for toddlers increased from 30% to 80%. Across this unique window of time, we have access to rich survey data on language skills and home environment for 100,000 children, and genetically informative data, linked with administrative records on community- and family level socioeconomic risks and opportunities, and on national achievement test scores. These data allow us powerful analytic opportunities, combining state-of-the-art statistical, econometric, psychometric, and genetic epidemiological methods. I am well positioned to lead this project, having qualified for a Professorship at the University of Oslo aged 36, and having considerable experience in (a) publishing in highly respected scientific journals, (b) working at the intersection of research and policy, (c) leading research projects, and (d) mentoring younger scholars.

AdJUST is a transdisciplinary European consortium whose objective is to achieve a step change in societal understanding of the distributive repercussions of the transition to climate neutrality, and to identify effective and actively-supported policy interventions to accompany climate action so that no-one is left behind. AdJUST combines research approaches from complementary disciplines with a continuous social dialogue, ensuring that the project practices open science, models procedural justice, and builds understanding, trust and capacity among citizens and other stakeholders concerning the transition to climate neutrality. AdJUST engages European public bodies, industry, civil society and researchers—i.e. the quadruple helix—to design and promote a shared vision, inspiring them towards the common goal of achieving climate neutrality. It relies on state-of-the-art economic assessment tools, statistical analysis, and research approaches from other Social Sciences & Humanities disciplines—including political science, business management, public administration, political theory, philosophy and ethics—to generate methodologically-sound research results on the full range of challenges of the just transition. These comprise technical, economic, and social/equity dimensions for firms, workers, households and public bodies, and the potential distributional impacts of the EU Green Deal, NextGenerationEU and Fit for 55. AdJUST produces a set of actionable and context-specific policy recommendations—complementing the Just Transition Fund and the Social Climate Fund—to effectively manage competitiveness and distributional trade-offs associated with the transition across Europe, and in specific countries and sectors. Moving well beyond standard public opinion analysis of preferences for climate action, AdJUST probes the conditions under which households, firms, and unions will actively support these initiatives to transition Europe to carbon neutrality.

Our main objective is to identify determinants of brain, cognitive and mental health at different stages of life. By integration, harmonisation and enrichment of major European neuroimaging studies of age differences and changes, we will obtain an unparalleled database of fine-grained brain, cognitive and mental health measures of more than 6.000 individuals. Longitudinal brain imaging, genetic and health data are available for a major part, as well as cognitive/mental health measures for extensively broader cohorts, exceeding 40.000 examinations in total. By linking these data, also to additional databases and biobanks, including birth registries, national and regional archives, and by enriching them with new online data collection and novel measures, we will address risk and protective factors of brain, cognitive and mental health throughout the lifespan. We will identify the pathways through which risk and protective factors work and their moderators. Through exploitation of, and synergies with, existing European infrastructures and initiatives, this approach of integrating, harmonising and enriching brain imaging datasets will make major conceptual, methodological and analytical contributions towards large integrative cohorts and their efficient exploitation. We will thus provide novel information on brain, cognitive and mental health maintenance, onset and course of brain, cognitive and mental disorders, and lay a foundation for earlier diagnosis of brain disorders, aberrant development and decline of brain, cognitive and mental health, as well as future preventive and therapeutic strategies. Working with stakeholders and health authorities, the project will provide the evidence base for policy strategies for prevention and intervention, improving clinical practice and public health policy for brain, cognitive and mental health. This project is realized by a close collaboration of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) and major European brain research centres