Dr. Ilkay Unay-Gailhard

Dr. Ilkay Unay-Gailhard

Research areas

Rural youth

Agricultural communication

Digital sociology

Rural sociology

Personal details

Ilkay Unay-Gailhard received her master’s degree in agricultural economics, and rural policy from University of Montpellier and SupAgro, France in 2008. She completed her traineeship at OECD, Paris. She worked two years as a lecturer at Northeast Normal University, Economics Department, China, and received her PhD in agricultural economics from the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in 2016.

Since 2010 Dr. Unay-Gailhard has served as a researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Germany. Her research projects have been funded by a variety of foundations including EU, German Research Foundation (DFG), and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

In 2020 Dr. Unay-Gailhard was awarded the EU Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellowship for her research project “YOUNG FARMERS” (2021-2024), and affiliated to UNESCO Chair for Community, Leadership, and Youth Development at the Pennsylvania State University, USA.

The “YOUNG FARMERS” project aims to explore digital communication transformation to develop a new thinking that guides generational renewal policies in farms and to contribute to the two main challenges within the contemporary socio-economic research field: (i) a global difficulty of attracting youth into farming, and (ii) the growing pressure on institutions to respond to the demand for efficient knowledge-transfer to youth in the digital age. Of particular relevance is the potential for comparative research on the “use of digital communication tools” in the USA and in Germany.

Links

1.  “YOUNG FARMERS” project description at EC page: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/895185

2.  Personal page at Leibniz Institute: https://www.iamo.de/en/institute/staff/details/unay-gailhard/