This research project investigates how individuals’ cognitive abilities, personality traits and socioeconomic background predict their risk preferences and behaviour in gambling markets. We use a unique data set which combines socioeconomic registry data on the Finnish population, player account data on horse race betting, and the Finnish Defence Forces’ cognitive ability and personality traits test data on conscripts. Our approach allows for drawing conclusions about individual behaviour in an actual market setting with a rich set of controllable attributes. Our findings provide novel insights into decision making under risk and gambling behaviour. The results can be applied in analyses of financial decision making and gambling markets. Research is funded by Academy of Finland.
Petra Kuivala (petra.kuivala@uef.fi)
Petra Kuivala, Doctor of Theology, works as an Assistant Professor of Global Christianity at the School of Theology, University of Eastern Finland.
Previously, Kuivala has worked as a postdoctoral researcher of Area and Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Art and as a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki (2014-2023). In 2020-2023, she held an appointment as a Visiting Scholar and an Associate at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, at Harvard University. In 2016-2017, Kuivala held an appointment as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Cuban Research Institute, Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs, at Florida International University. She has received fellowships and research grants from the Academy of Finland, University of Helsinki, the Lutheran World Federation, The Osk. Huttunen Foundation, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, Aune Vappula Fund, and The Research Center of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Finland.
Dr. Kuivala’s research and teaching intersect with the study of religion, history, Cuban studies, and Latin American studies, addressing Christianity in the Americas, with a particular focus on religion in Cuba, the Cuban Revolution, and socialist society.
Kuivala’s dissertation (2019), Never a Church of Silence: The Catholic Church in Revolutionary Cuba, 1959-1986, focused on Catholicism in socialist Cuba, drawing on archival and oral sources as well as ethnographic work conducted in Cuba. During the fieldwork for her dissertation, Dr. Kuivala became the first scholar to access previously unstudied archives of the Catholic Church in Cuba, working on classified sources dating to the revolutionary period. In total, she perused more than 40,000 pages of previously unexplored documents in nine Cuban archives.
Most recently, Kuivala has written about religious material culture and lived religion in Cuba, and religious moral authority confronting totalitarian state power in Latin America. Her articles have been published in, among others, Cuban Studies, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, and the International Journal of Cuban Studies. Kuivala is also the Editor-in-Chief of The Yearbook of the Finnish Society of Church History.
Dr. Kuivala’s current research project, The Revolution, Religion, and Social Experience in Cuba, 1961–1991, funded by the Academy of Finland, analyzes the intersections of vernacular religion and lived experience in the social histories of the Cuban Revolution.
Yulia Yamineva (yulia.yamineva@uef.fi)
My primary area of expertise is climate law and governance, where I have worked on a variety of topics, including:
- International climate law and governance, and UN climate negotiations;
- Law and governance of mitigating emissions of short-lived climate pollutants (black carbon, methane);
- Climate – air quality policy integration;
- Science-policy interface, especially Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change;
- Climate policies in national and regional contexts: EU, Arctic, Russia, China.
My approach to research is interdisciplinary, drawing on the fields of environmental law, policy and governance, and, sometimes, science & technology studies. I closely collaborate with climate and atmospheric scientists.
At the UEF Law School, I am also Co-Director of the Master’s Degree Programme in Environmental Policy and Law, responsible for its major in climate law, as well as Director of the UEF-UNEP Course on Multilateral Environmental Agreements.
Prior to academic work, I worked for the UN Climate Change Convention Secretariat, supporting intergovernmental negotiations on climate finance, and International Institute for Sustainable Development – Earth Negotiations Bulletin. I hold PhD in International Studies and MPhil in Environmental Policy, both from the University of Cambridge. I am proud of my Bashkort heritage: Bashkort people are an ethnic group indigenous to Southern Urals in Russia.
Current projects:
Principal investigator of the project consortium ‘ClimAirPathways: Science-based legal pathways to reduce black carbon emissions in the EU and China: Towards integrated climate – air quality approaches’ (Research Council of Finland, 2023-2027)
Current PhD students:
- Raihanatul Jannat “Building climate-resilient development of women in Bangladesh through adaptation: A study on the potential of global environmental law” (2020)
- Saga Eriksson ‘EU sustainable finance legislation: Towards creation of green markets and agency?’ (2022; UEF Law School funding)
- Moritz Petersmann ‘Fit for governing modern wicked problems? International science-policy interfaces under scrutiny’ (2022; Kone Foundation grant)
- Katri Varis ‘Role of scientific advisory bodies in EU climate law and policy’ (2023)
- Camille Bertaux ‘WHO guidelines & environmental law in a moving context – from mere reference to conclusive influence?’, UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles, Centre for Environmental Law (Member of the supervisory committee with Prof Misonne and Prof Peeters; 2022)
- Niklas Löther ‘From fragmentation to integration in legal responses to climate change and air pollution: A transnational investigation of pathways and obstacles to integrated environmental lawmaking in the European Union’ (2023; funded by ClimAirPathways project)