Friederike Mengel

**Professor Friederike Mengel** holds a PhD from the University of Alicante (2008) and is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Essex. Her research interests span (Evolutionary) Game Theory, Learning and Categorization, Models of (Bounded) Rationality, Social Networks, Behavioural and Experimental Economics, and Family and Health Economics. She is actively involved in supervising doctoral students, with recent advisees including Natasha Mary Brooks (2025) and Qingchao Zeng (2024).

Her work integrates experimental methods with theoretical frameworks to explore topics like cooperative behavior, productivity in hybrid work environments, and gender bias in academic evaluations. Notable grants include a 2020 Leverhulme Prize for Economics and British Academy funding for projects on Homophily and (Over)-Confidence (2019) and Opinion Dynamics (2018).

Mengel’s publications frequently address societal challenges, such as public goods provision, redistribution preferences, and the cultural transmission of social norms. She has collaborated with institutions like the European Research Council on early childhood development and economic behavior. Her research lab focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to behavioral economics, leveraging data from field experiments and lab-based studies.