Dr. Giulia Slater is junior researcher in Economics at STATEC Research, the research division of the National Statistics Office of Luxembourg. Before that, she completed a PhD in Economics at the University of Siena. Her work has since focused on the role of social capital for the well-being of individuals and societies. In particular, she explored the importance of both relational goods and trust in directly determining the mental health and life satisfaction of people, as well as their role as moderators of the importance of money for subjective well-being. As part of her PhD dissertation, she further analyzed the role of social capital for well-being during the Covid-19 pandemic, both at the individual level and from a public health and governance perspective. She has recently been working on the relationship between trust and economic growth, and published an ISQOLS working paper on the topic.

Some of her other research interests include well-being and social relations at work, the epidemiology of social capital, and the role of subjective well-being in determining productivity and consumption. She is now part of an international Horizon project, which aims, among other things, at exploring the possibility of using a well-being framework to create a sustainable economy.

She started researching in the field of quality of life because as a trained economist she was taught to measure utility with income, and to measure progress with economic growth. She never thought this was the best way to do so, and finding that researchers had been using subjective well-being convinced her it could be an alternative to empirically measure utility. Moreover, it became clear to her that focusing on making well-being a priority would be key in making sure societies will thrive in a world of environmental and social challenges that include climate crises and inequality concerns, including well-being ones.

Dr. Slater thinks the field of quality of life studies still has a lot to develop and research on: firstly, she believes that to better inform policy making we should decide on how to best measure subjective well-being, as this topic is still up for much debate. Secondly, quality of life research should find a way to implement a well-being economy to reconcile the current socio-economic system with a sustainable society. Additionally, we should focus on reducing well-being inequalities, and research into the determinants and solutions for the increasing misery that many individuals are experiencing. Lastly, she believes that what could benefit the field is further research on policies targeting well-being and social capital and how these can be implemented.

She has been a member of ISQOLS since she attended the online conference in 2021, and she has attended all the yearly events after to keep up with all the great work that well-being scholars are producing in this interdisciplinary context. The ISQOLS community has always been very supportive of her work and her career development, and she is grateful for the research, as well as material, help that ISQOLS provided her with, for instance with the education grant in 2022 and the post-doctoral fellowship. She has learned a lot on quality of life studies since being a member of ISQOLS and she is happy to continue being part of this community.