“Sow an act and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny.” – Charles Reade
Born and raised primarily in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam until 2011, I departed to Helsinki, Finland to start my academic journey with a Bachelor in Economics at Aalto University and an exchange studies in behavioral economics, philosophy, and political science at the National University of Singapore. In 2014, upon realizing my passion for academic research, I left for Amsterdam to work on the Research Master at the Tinbergen Institute and later, a Ph.D. degree in Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam. At the start of 2021, I started working on exciting new text ft. experimental projects at the Chair of Microeconomics at the University of Hamburg, Germany.
By collecting novel speech data sets of debate tournaments and negotiation exchanges, I combine computational linguistic tools and applied econometric techniques to extract insights on gender differences in speech behavior and any ensuing impacts on evaluations. In my ongoing research projects, I integrate NLP & ML techniques into online surveys and field experiments to understand: (1) heterogeneities and the effectiveness of persuasion strategies across social groups; (2) how group deliberation impacts individual beliefs & preferences; and (3) how persuasion mechanism propagates across echo chambers.
Before the pandemic, when I am not researching, I spent my weekends roaming across 23 European and Asian countries, to debate and adjudicate in 45+ major debate tournaments. This streak of weekend adventures has brought around quite some international successes, including the World and European Universities Debate Championships. Debating and adjudicating at the professional level enables me to continuously train my logical argumentation, strategic intuition, and most importantly, respectful communication with people from various walks of life.
Debating is a crucial tool to sharpen democratic civic engagement. With extensive coaching and adjudicating activities, I strive to provide a solid social and learning foundation for as many people to benefit from this activity as possible, especially those from less developed debate circuits in Vietnam, Finland, and the Netherlands.
Huyen T.T. Nguyen 