Els Bekaert

Supervisor

Department of Economics

Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Els Bekaert is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Economics at Ghent University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the United Nations University – CRIS, affiliated to the Nature, Climate and Health and Migration and Social Policy clusters. She obtained her PhD in Economics at Ghent University in 2022. Her research explores how climate change shapes human mobility, focusing on how environmental shocks affect migration aspirations and decisions, and why many people remain in climate-vulnerable regions despite rising risks. She currently holds a three-year postdoctoral fellowship from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) for her project “Towards a better understanding of climate (im)mobility” (Application no. 12A5424N). By combining georeferenced climate data with survey evidence, her work aims to nuance climate-mobility debates and inform policy. She is also affiliated with the international research network CliMigHealth.

Email: Els.Bekaert@UGent.be

Research themes:

Global migration and mobility || Health, health care and psychosocial well-being