Prof. Gulherme Lichand’s Innaugural Lecture

April 2018: Guil­herme Finkel­farb Lic­hand gave his in­au­gur­al lec­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Zurich on April 30, 2018.

Pro­fes­sor Lic­hand is As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor for Child Well­be­ing and De­vel­op­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty. The top­ic of his lec­ture was the psy­chol­o­gy of pover­ty. In this lec­ture, he pro­posed a link­age be­tween the two mind­sets about why the poor are poor: one say­ing that the poor are vic­tims of their own de­ci­sions and the oth­er say­ing that the poor face con­straints that keep them poor. He ex­plained about cog­ni­tive load and fo­cus and talked about how risk plays a key role in the de­ci­sion mak­ing of the poor. In­tro­duc­ing var­i­ous ex­per­i­ments to the au­di­ence, Lic­hand sug­gest­ed dif­fer­ent ways through which we can in­cor­po­rate new meth­ods in pol­i­cy in or­der to bet­ter the con­di­tion of chil­dren in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. Pro­fes­sor Lic­hand con­clud­ed his lec­ture by men­tion­ing the im­por­tant work of the Cen­tre for Child Well-be­ing and De­vel­op­ment.