Utsoree Das receives the Subside Tremplin prize; an initiative to advance gender equality in academia

Utsoree Das, a Ph.D. candidate from the Geneva School of Economics and Management, has received the Subside Tremplin 2025 prize from the Equality & Diversity Department of the University of Geneva. The award allows for a temporary leave of absence to advance in one's academic career.

Her research focuses on the intersection of environmental and resource economics, and development economics. She has published two co-authored papers on the topic of climate shocks and the effect on farmers' revenues and household size, in peer reviewed journals in economics.

She is currently working on a field experiment —a randomized controlled trial—in the Ashanti region of Ghana as part of the Horizon EU-funded project TRANSPATH. Despite Ghana’s significant role in global cocoa production, the majority of cocoa farmers live in poverty and receive only a small share of the final value of chocolate. Most have never consumed the product they help produce. Deforestation remains a critical issue, as farmers often clear forests to sustain their livelihoods. With upcoming EU regulations requiring traceability and proof of deforestation-free cocoa by 2025, producer cooperatives are facing substantial compliance challenges.

To address this, a team of researchers including Utsoree Das, her supervisor, GSEM Professor Salvatore Di Falco and Erik Katovich have partnered with Kuapa Kokoo, Ghana’s largest cocoa farmers' cooperative. Together, they are developing a mobile app that will digitalize Kuapa Kokoo’s entire supply chain. The app will not only verify deforestation-free cocoa at the farm level but also collect essential data on farming practices and challenges, replacing paper records with real-time digital tracking. This experiment will allow for a rigorous test of whether digital traceability can influence farmer behavior and environmental outcomes. The aim is for insights from the study to lead to scalable policy solutions across cocoa-producing regions.

Receiving this subsidy will enable Utsoree Das to travel to Ghana during key phases of the project.

Academic research suffers from a lack of female representation. The Subside Tremplin program aims to empower female researchers by relieving them of specific responsibilities for one semester, funded through a replacement. This opportunity allows them to focus on developing their career and academic profile by enhancing their research portfolio, writing articles, completing their thesis, or gaining experience abroad. Additionally, female researchers receive mentorship from a professor.

Previous recipients from the GSEM include Leonie Bräuer (2024), Pia Pannatier (2023), Federica Braccioli and Alexandra Telychko (2022), Ursa Bernardic and Yuming Zhang (2021), Monika Avila Marquez (2020), and Katarzyna Reluga (2019).

> For more information on the awards and nominations received by members of the GSEM, please click here.