As a think tank by the youth for the youth, the European Student Think Tank is positioned at a special junction: It informs its young audience about European affairs and represents the youth on the European Union-level. Through its Working Group on Youth Employment, it supports the Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth, led by the International Labour Organization since 2016. This overarching platform aims to catalyse action towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by bringing together various stakeholders, including youth organizations, in the fight for decent work. To contribute to this endeavour, the EST Working Group connects students from a number of universities across Europe. In its first project cycle 2018/19, this interdisciplinary research group develops informative low-threshold knowledge products, in the form of EST Election Briefs, and communicates its contents via the EST’s infrastructure and various partnering organizations and platforms. Topics cover a range of issues Europe’s youth is facing in the world of work and the European Union’s role in shaping and addressing them.

Team Members

Arthur Corazza

Contact: youthemployment@esthinktank.com / LinkedIn

Election Brief: Of Carts and Horses: Youth in Non-Standard Employment

Arthur is a graduate student of European Studies Research at the London School of Economics, specializing in political economy. He founded and currently heads the EST Working Group on Youth Employment. Before setting foot in London, Arthur has worked in macroeconomic research at WU Vienna, in international affairs at the United Nations in Geneva, and in journalism. Youth participation has enabled him to gain insights into European policy-making, for instance when heading the working group on youth employment at the Young European Council 2017 or as youth representative in the European Parliament’s EMPL Committee in 2018. Having published academic and journalistic pieces, Arthur hopes to continue working at the intersection of policy-making and research in the future. At the European Student Think Tank, his research focuses on the quality of work, non-standard forms of employment, including internships, and regulation in Europe.

 

Eugénie Delzenne

Contact: LinkedIn

Currently pursuing an MSc in European Political Economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Eugénie Delzenne holds an MA in European studies from Sciences Po Lille (2018), as well as a joint BA in Politics and International Relations from Sciences Po Lille and the University of Kent (2017). Her research interests revolve around intra-EU labour mobility and social convergence. Consequently, as a social policy intern at Pour La Solidarité, a Brussels-based think-tank, she has published work on the revision of the posted workers directive and on the posting of drivers in the road transport sector. At the European Student Think Tank, her research focuses on the interplay between structural reforms and youth emigration from Southern European countries after the global financial crisis.  Specifically, she looks at how labour market and social protection reforms have altered the working and life opportunities of young people from crisis-affected countries.

 

Henri Ebelin

Contact: LinkedIn

Henri is a graduate student in the International Employment Relations stream of the HRO programme at the London School of Economics. He previously studied Business Management with Spanish at Cardiff University, spending an intercalary year in the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) where he specialised in Employment and Labour Relations. His research interests are now centred around the regulation of labour standards in global production networks and the emergence of new forms of employment in the era of digitalisation. As a member of the EST Working Group on Youth Employment, he explores the rise of the gig economy and its implications for policy-making, both at EU and national levels. Specifically, his analysis focuses on which approaches have shown promise in addressing the trade-off between flexibility and security for platform workers, with a particular emphasis on how effective access to social protection can be developed for this category of self-employed.

 

Casper Gelderblom

Contact: LinkedIn

Election Brief: Youth, Unions, and a European Future That Works For All

Casper Gelderblom’s work centers on the nexus between the practice and theory of labor relations. Currently pursuing an MPhil in Political Thought at the University of Cambridge, Casper previously studied International Development at Leiden University College (BSc, 2017) and European History at the universities of Leiden, Panthéon-Sorbonne, and Oxford (MA, 2018). Besides his studies, he has worked as a policy trainee for the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, as a research intern at the Israeli labor rights NGO Kav LaOved, and as Visiting Fellow at Cornell University’s Worker Institute in New York. In addition, Casper is a long-time member of the largest union of the Netherlands, FNV, which he has represented on the European Trade Union Confederation’s Youth Committee. Within the Working Group, Casper focuses on the relations between young workers and trade unions. Given his interest in transnationalism, he is particularly interested in ways in which unions can mobilize young Europeans across national borders to shape an EU labor market that works for young people.

 

Paola Lo Bue Oddo

Paola Lo Bue Oddo holds a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Political Science from the University of Milan with top marks, a full scholarship and the publication of her thesis. She is currently in her 3rd year of a five year long Masters Degree in Law at the University of Bologna. Her international work and internship experiences also include the Statistical Office of the European Union, the European Court of Justice, and the Franco German Youth Office. Publishing research papers for various international think tanks, her main areas of interest include international affairs, sociology and development economics. Passionate about languages, she has a certified C2/C1 level in four European ones and is currently studying two more. At the EST she keenly explores the consequences of precarious work and youth unemployment, tackling its links to social marginalization and criminal behaviour.

 

Marina Papazotou

Contact: LinkedIn

Election Brief: Gender Inequality in the World of Work

Marina Papazotou is a qualified lawyer, member of a Greek Bar Association. She holds a masters degree in European Union Law from Leiden University, where she wrote her thesis on the Human Rights of LGBT+ Asylum seekers. After graduating from Leiden University, she completed an internship at Eurojust in the field of Communications and a traineeship at the Protocol Unit of the European Parliament in Brussels. She is currently established in London. Her role in the EST group is to explore the inequalities between young men and women in their professional functions. She is passionate about human rights and gender equality, a subject about which she has researched while developing a Podcast with the Schuman Trainees’ Committee of the European Parliament. 

 

Severin Rapp

Contact: LinkedIn

Election Brief: Having the Cake and Eating it? – Vocational education and Inequalities

Severin is a graduate student in Comparative Social Policy at the University of Oxford. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business, Economics and Social Sciences from the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). Before coming to Oxford, Severin worked in applied economic policy research and Austrian social policy from various perspectives, including academics, think tanks and policy making. Most recently, he examined the effect of price developments on the financial situation of Austrian households at the Research Institute Economics of Inequality at WU. His research interests revolve around education policy and social inequality, with a special focus on consumption. Primarily, he addresses policy issues on the European level. As a member of the EST Working Group on Youth Employment, he investigates European education policies and their implications for quality employment. Social inequalities resulting from different educational pathways constitute the heart of this analysis. In particular, apprenticeship-based learning is to be scrutinized.

 

Alessandra Sciarra

Contact: LinkedIn

Alessandra Sciarra is a graduate student of International Social and Public Policy at the London School of Economics, where she is specializing on the impact of social and public policy on economic inequality. She previously studied Political Science at LUISS University in Rome and SciencePo Paris, where she was able to develop her academic interests in the area of social policy and labour market regulation. She is particularly passionate about working conditions of women and migrants, and the informal sector.

Her role in EST is to investigate the relationship between working conditions and mental health issues, and the European Union’s response to the risks that young people are facing. She has been active in the third sector in Italy for several years, advocating for migrants’ rights and working with the Italian NGO ‘European People’, promoting European integration through the Model of the European Parliament.

 

Justus Seuferle

Contact: LinkedIn

Justus is a graduate student in EU Politics with an emphasis on political economy at the London School of Economics (LSE). He holds a Bachelors degree in political science from the university of Vienna, where he also studied history and economics. During his studies he worked in political and governmental institutions where he mainly worked on research topics revolving around education and social policy. His academic focus is on social-democratic parties in Europe. As a member of the EST working group on youth employment he will be investigating the commodification of education and the rising price of study, strongly linked to student debt and the employability of graduates in the European Union. 

 

Götz Siedler

Contact: LinkedIn

Election Brief: A shifting labour market: Polarisation or Upgrading?

Götz Siedler studied Economics in Edinburgh and Mannheim where he completed his degree in 2017. Since then he has been pursuing a Master programme – also in Economics – at the University of Bonn. Currently, he is spending a semester in Siena, Tuscany. His academic interests include economic history, economic geography, labour and welfare economics. In Bonn, he also worked in the Public Relations department of the IZA, helping to explain complex papers in the field of labour economics in a way understandable to a broad audience. As EST Policy Research Officer he works on the topic of Labour Market Polarisation, i.e. the tendency observable in Western countries of an increase in both low- and high-skill work threatening to undermine the middle class.