Meet Mattias Öhman, Associated Researcher

Mattias is a researcher in health economics at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research and member of U-CARE Executive Committee. He is one of our associated researchers and has worked on a project which investigated how a child's cancer disease affects parents' income and health.

What Mattias enjoys the most about cooperating with U-CARE is that he gets to meet with researchers from different disciplines. The collaboration began in the autumn of 2011, when Mattias began his doctoral studies at Uppsala University.

– As a doctoral student, fifty percent of my funding came from U-CARE, but I worked from the Department of Economics, Mattias explains.

Ever since then, Mattias has had a continued U-CARE engagement.

It may perhaps come across as surprising that Mattias, who is an economist, was a doctoral student within the U-CARE programme. But it is actually very common for economists to collaborate with researchers from other disciplines.

I think that many people have an inaccurate idea about economists – they think that the only thing we do is working with budgets and taxes. What I do is that I study basically anything, but I use statistical tools developed within the economic discipline, Mattias explains.

One thing that unites Mattias’ different research projects is that they are all dealing with health in one way or another. It is Mattias’ curiosity that spurs him on in his research:

– I want to find out how the world works, he says with a smile.

Mattias’ curiosity is reflected in his hobbies too:

– I do read a lot of philosophy – David Hume is a favourite philosopher. I also have a genuine interest in technology, building computers and that type of things. And I like going to clubs too – preferably a synth club, reflecting my overall interest in technology, Mattias concludes.