Sep 1, 2020
Did you know unprecedented numbers of people searched for prayer during the COVID-19 pandemic's early months? So, what role does religion play in disasters? Does it help or is religion a distraction from reality? Check out: COVID-19, Disasters & Religion: Conversation with Dr Jeanet Bentzen (Multi-Hazards Podcast S02 E15) On Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, etc. Check out the Study Guide, click on the top left "PDF": https://multi-hazards.libsyn.com/covid-19-disasters-religion-conversation-with-dr-jeanet-bentzen
Dr. Jeanet Sinding Bentzen is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on economic approaches to decision-making and culture, and includes topics related to religion, institutions, economic growth, economic history, and geographic confounders. Most of her recent work is within the Economics of Religion field. Methodologically, she uses econometric techniques to test theories from psychology, sociology, theology, and anthropology empirically. Her methodology involves broad datasets spanning the globe, allowing testing of the generalisability of the various theories.
She's helped us make sense of the COVID-19 crisis. In June 2020, she wrote a column called "Rising religiosity as a global response to COVID-19 fear". Before that, in May 2020, she wrote "In Crisis We Pray" paper, one in the Centre for Economic Policy (CEPR) COVID Economics series. In Apr 2020, with Gunes Gokmen she wrote a Discussion Paper called "Power of Religion". Before all this, in Feb 2020, she published with Lena Sperling a CEPR paper called "God Politics". In Dec 2019, she became the new Executive Director of Association of Economics, Religion, and Culture (ASREC).