Who are you?
Michael Egerer, a University researcher at the CEACG. As a sociologist, I am also teaching qualitative interview methods in the discipline of Sociology.
How did you end up at CEACG?
I was a PhD student of professor Pekka Sulkunen, who founded the CEACG. I have been a part of CEACG ever since.
What is your current research about?
The main topics of my research are addiction, gambling, and gambling regulations. Lately, I have been also setting into the field of tobacco and nicotine regulation. As the researcher of the month, I want to highlight one of the gambling regulatory studies I am working on at the moment. Together with Charlie Thompson from the University of Trondheim, I am looking at gambling policies in four different countries (Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Switzerland). We are analysing these countries’ latest changes in gambling legislation and looking at which rationales and indicators have been brought forward in framing new gambling laws. In this work, we take a system theoretical perspective. With this approach we aim at grasping the interrelations between the economic, legal, scientific and other logics and indicators in a novel way. We also inquire which other legislations are brought forward in the analysed government documents as particularly successful or unsuccessful in their gambling regulation.
Why do you think it is important to examine this topic?
Finland is currently in the process of writing a new gambling law. Under the new law a considerable part of the online gambling market will be opened for commercial business to apply for licences. Understanding other jurisdictions’ rationales and experiences with such an opening of the market is paramount in shaping an efficient and fair Finnish legislation, which really balances the different societal interests. Integrating and using sociological systems theory advances also the academic work on gambling in facilitating a more comprehensive perspective beyond the preeminent and limited individualised understanding of (problem) gambling. It allows to reveal the underlying drivers in the legislation process and in legislators’ decisions.
If you could switch places with your CEACG colleague for one day, who would you choose and why?
While not being anymore a colleague in CEACG, I would choose Matilda Hellman, our previous research director and now professor at Uppsala University. She is brilliant in social scientific theories, while being able to communicate her work also in the policy arena.