Defne Mia Aktas

I'm a third-year PhD student in Economics at Tilburg University, where I also completed my Bachelor's and Research Master's. Tilburg has been home for my whole academic life so far, and it's where I first got interested in using data and experiments to understand how people actually behave — not just how theory says they should.

My research sits at the intersection of experimental and applied microeconomics. I'm especially interested in questions around gender, the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ populations, and discrimination more broadly. These aren't always the most comfortable topics to study, but that's part of why I find them worth the effort — I think careful, evidence-based work can bring a bit more clarity to conversations that are too often shaped by assumption rather than data. My hope is that rigorous methodology, applied with care, can get us a little closer to the truth on questions that matter.

I'm always happy to talk research, teaching, or anything in between — feel free to reach out at m.aktas [at] tilburguniversity.edu.